., — 

THE 

RIGHT  MAN 


BRIAN  HOOKER 


HOOKER,  BRIAN 

Right  Man 

story  is  the  tale  of  one  girl  and  two  men,  and  of  the 
strife  of  the  two  for  the  one.    It  is  a  battle  royal  of  true 

steel  against  unyielding  iron,  with  victory  ever  hovering 
in  the  balance.  The  entire  action  takes  place  on  an  Atlantic 
liner  during  a  single  crossing.  High-keyed,  brilliant,  and 
unconventional,  The  Right  Man  is  the  best  of  company. 
Mr.  Kimball's  art  has  made  the  book  a  thing  of  joy  and 
beauty. 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 


i  ;5  c>  —  • 


itor» 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 


BRIAN  HOOKER 


Illustrations  by 
Alonzo  Kimball 


Indianapolis 

The  Bobbs^Merrill  Company 
Publishers 


COPYRIGHT  1908 
THE  BOBBS-MERRILL  COMPANY 

OCTOBUt 


PRESS  OF 

BRAUNWORTH  &,  CO. 

BOOKBINDERS  AND  PRINTERS 

BROOKLYN,  N.  Y. 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 


THE   RIGHT  MAN 

T  the  conventional  hour  of 
ten  in  the  morning  a  highly 
conventional  ocean-liner  was 
departing  for  Hamburg,  by  way  of 
Boulogne-sur-Mer — a  wallowing  levi- 
athan of  dusky  iron  swarmed  over  and 
about  with  fluttering  fresh  color  and 
barbarous  with  a  multeity  of  twit- 
tering farewells.  A  heavy  young  man 
perspired  up  the  gangway  and,  gasp- 
ing, dumped  an  armful  of  huge  books 
i 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

into  the  arms  of  a  lighter  and  younger 
man,  finely  inconspicuous,  who  had 
observed  his  tumultuous  arrival  with 
derisive  languor  through  wafts  of 
cigarette  smoke. 

"Gi'  rr?  a  cigarette,"  panted  the 
new-come::  slapping  five  pockets. 
Then,  breathing  clouds  of  relief, 
"Thought  I'd  missed  you  this  time, 
didn't  you — you  lotus-eating  mazour- 
ka?" 

The  other  twinkled  appreciation. 
"Oh,  no.  I  only  wondered  whether 
you'd  be  able  to  make  it  in  a  hansom 
or  have  to  hire  an  automobile.  What 
are  these — your  club-checks  for  last 
month?" 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

"Bach.  Fugues  I  have  met.  The 
kind-hearted  clavichord — I  knew  you 
wanted  him,  but  I'd  no  idea  the  old 
sinner  was  so  hefty,  until  they  sent  him 
up.  If  he's  too  heavy  for  any  other 
place,  eat  him  for  breakfast  to-mor- 


row." 


"Much  thanks.  It's  like  you,  old 
man.  I'm  a  better  sailor  than  I  look, 
though." 

"The  thoroughbred  theory  again — 
you  can't  kill  a  Gordon?  Neptune's  no 
snob,  though,  you'll  find.  Where's 
Tony?  I'm  surprised  you  let  her  out  of 
your  sight." 

Gordon  stared  into  the  filthy  water 
overside  a  moment,  unheeding.  Then 

3 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

the  question  seemed  to  reach  him  as 
though  from  a  distance,  and  he  reacted 
into  animation. 

"Tony  is  packed  up,  sir,  and  she'll 
stay  packed  until  I  reach  Paris.  The 
idea  of  a  violin  in  the  polyodorous 
cabins  of  a  steamer  is  ipecac  to  my  soul. 
Besides,  I  don't  know  anybody  on 
board;  and  a  strange  audience  of 
these" — he  waved  his  cigarette  at  the 
chattering  decks — "Goths!  Country- 
clubbers!  Smile-mongering  products 
of  the  Age  of  Isms,  turned  out  in  large 
assortments  for  the  European  market! 
Navahoe  for  theirs.  Phool" 

His  affectation  was  not  irritating,  be- 
cause he  wore  it  like  a  hat — not  as  a 

4 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

mask  or  a  garment.  One  saw  the  quiet 
hazel  eyes  beneath,  and  felt  that  he 
would  remove  it  courteously  on  occa- 
sion. His  friend  followed  his  gesture, 
caught  a  feminine  face  in  the  throng, 
bowed,  and  said  in  the  tone  of  a 
mentor: 

''Why,  Dickie  dear,  how  unkind! 
Consider  the  innocent  pleasure  and 
elevation  of  spirit  you  might  purvey  to 
the  mid-ocean  musical.  Consider  the 
soulful  maid  thrilled  into  Prossy's 
Complaint  by  your  dulcet  strains.  Con- 
sider the  plump  adulation  of  middle- 
aged  ladies,  the  mutterings  of  mascu- 
line jealousy.  And  you  call  yourself  a 
musician!" 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

Gordon  had  been  inattentive  again. 
This  time,  however,  he  was  gazing,  not 
into  vacancy,  but  with  a  concentration 
which  would  have  been  staring  had  he 
not  known  how  to  do  it,  at  a  tall,  sun- 
burnt, amber-haired  girl  on  the  hurri- 
cane-deck just  above  them.  Presently 
he  turned  away,  blew  a  thin  smoke- 
wreath,  and  said  merely:  "Who  is 
she?"  Friends  do  not  waste  explana- 
tions. 

"Miss  Dome,  Audrey  Dome.  Isn't 
she  a  wonder?  I  thought  she  was  at 
York  Harbor  last  summer." 

"Not  when  I  was.  Let  me  see.  The 
others  are — hold  on,  don't  tell  me— her 
stodgy  fiance,  and,  let's  see — nobody's 
6 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

mother  .  .  .  her  aunt!  Miss  Dome's 
aunt,  from  Boston,  a  Unitarian.  Any- 
where near  right?" 

"  'Holmes,  you  amaze  me.'  She's  the 
tail-end  of  an  old  family — too  old — so 
she's  doing  the  best  possible  thing  in 
marrying  that  fellow  Hudson.  He's  a 
Captain  of  Industry  and  a  golf-shark. 
I  met  him  in  the  Metropolitan  tourna- 
ment. He  has  no  soul,  no  nerves,  no 
grandfather,  and  the  body  of  a  bull- 
moose.  He  drove  with  a  rubber-faced 
iron  and  beat  me  four  up." 

Gordon  looked  again.  "Oh,  that 
Hudson?  He  is  a  rubber-faced  iron, 
himself.  Oh,  dear!  Why  can't  you 
and  I  marry  all  the  girls  worth  appre- 

7 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

elating,  and  be  sure  they're  not  wasted? 
Let's  go  to  Turkey." 

"Dickie,  you  shock  me.  Come  on 
up  and  meet  her.  Quick,  there's  the 
last  call." 

"I  don't  want  to  meet  her.  I  should 
be  jealous.  I  don't  want  to  meet  any- 
body. Go  to  the  devil!  Quit!  Let  go 
— cut  it,  you  idiot!" 

But  objection  was  met  by  violence. 
He  was  hustled  up  the  steps,  books 
and  all,  struggling  good-naturedly, 
and  then  and  there  presented  to  Miss 
Dome;  to  Mr.  Hudson,  who  said: 
"Pleased  to  meet  you";  and  to  Miss 
Folcombe,  white-haired  and  black- 
browed,  who  bowed  from  the  waist  and 
8 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

said:  "Ah,  yes — a  son  of  Mr.  Kenneth 
Gordon?" 

"Let  me  make  him  interesting  to  you, 
Miss  Dome,"  said  the  Irrepressible. 
"He  didn't  want  to  meet  you,  and  only 
consented  when  I  told  him  you  were 
engaged." 

Gordon's  embarrassment  appeared 
only  in  a  baleful  glance.  In  the  midst 
of  the  ensuing  commonplaces  a  shout- 
ing broke  out  below.  The  Irrepressible 
bit  off  a  sentence,  clasped  hands  with 
Gordon  an  instant,  while  the  two  men's 
eyes  grew  momentarily  beautiful  with 
unspoken  fondness,  then  with  a  volley 
of  Parthian  adieux  rushed  violently 
down  the  moving  gangway,  leaped 

9 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

asprawl  on  the  dock  and  stood  waving, 
while  the  steamer  ponderously  de- 
parted. A  liner  in  close  quarters  does 
not  move.  She  alters  her  location. 


10 


II 


OU  don't  look  like  a  musi- 
cian," observed  Miss 
Dome.  She  was  lying 
curled  in  a  steamer-chair,  one  hand 
under  her  brown  cheek,  lazily  repose- 
ful in  the  sunshine.  Richard  Gordon's 
defiance  of  Neptune  had  been  justified, 
and  she  had  shared  his  immunity;  but 
the  Bostonian  aunt  had  spent  the  two 
days  in  pale  asseverations  of  perfect 
well-being,  and  Mr.  Hudson,  paying 
the  penalty  of  robustness,  had  been  in- 
visible outside  of  Sandy  Hook. 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

Gordon  looked  up  from  the  careful 
filling  of  his  pipe. 

"I'm  always  disappointing  people," 
he  said  plaintively.  "They  expect  a 
maker  of  agreeable  noises  to  have  the 
hair  and  eyes  of  a  cocker  spaniel,  the 
complexion  of  a  frog's  under  side,  and 
the  clothes  of  an  Israelite.  But  they 
say  I  write  better  than  I  play,  which  I 
valorously  take  as  a  compliment." 

Her  eyes  appreciated  his  flippancy 
which  her  voice  ignored.  "But  I'm 
not  'people.'  And  I  don't  mean  that 
you  ought  to  look  oily;  but — "  she 
groped  for  a  word,  and  took  refuge  in, 
"you  know  what  I  mean." 

"Of  course."    Gordon  held  out  his 

12 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

left  hand,  brown  as  her  own,  thin,  nerv- 
ous and  the  least  trifle  unsteady.  A 
patrician  hand,  highly  educated — the 
long  fingers  curiously  independent  and 
the  cords  from  wrist  to  knuckle  clearly 
visible  under  the  skin.  "The  answer  is 
that  all  people  look  exactly  what  they 
are — if  you  look  rightly."  His  eyes  fell 
on  Miss  Folcombe,  buried  in  steamer- 
rugs,  and  he  added:  "I  read  your 
aunt  at  first  sight.  Maiden  lady,  Bos- 
ton, Unitarian,  a  grove  of  family  trees 
surrounding  an  altar  to  propriety,  and 
a  lifetime  of  pure  culture." 

The  girl  gurgled.  "Yes — in  a  her- 
metically sealed  tube  like  a  microbe — 
but  that's  mean,  and  you  began  it  by 

13 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

being   very    impertinent.     Now    read 


me." 


"Honestly,  I'd  rather  not  try." 

"I  dare  you."  Then,  after  a  pause, 
"Why  not?" 

"I'm  afraid  of  guessing,  working  in 
inferences  —  trickery —  fortune-telling 
— and  I  want  to  be  honest." 

'She  met  his  eyes  quietly  a  moment, 
then  looked  seaward. 

"If  you  are  charlatanesque  I  shall  de- 
tect it,  and  be  as  forgiving  as  you  de- 
serve. Go  on."  There  was  nothing  but 
banter  in  her  tone. 

Gordon  looked  at  her  as  he  might 
have  studied  a  picture.  She  was  per- 
fectly in  harmony — the  delicate  fitness 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

of  feature,  the  amber  brightness  of  her 
hair  against  the  warm  brown  of  her 
skin,  the  indolence  of  lips  and  eyes,  the 
almost  feline  repose  in  all  the  long, ' 
slow  lines  of  her.  And  yet  the  whole 
personality  bore  a  curious  aroma  of 
tension,  an  indefinite  potential  of  the 
extreme,  the  impression  that  belongs  to 
the  greyhound  and  the  hothouse  rose, 
to  the  thoroughbred  horse  and  the  rac- 
ing yacht— a  suggestion  of  a  type  in- 
bred, over-refined,  forced  to  a  definite 
perfection  at  the  cost  of  normality.  It 
evaded  and  pervaded,  implicit  in  her, 
everywhere  and  nowhere.  Nothing  be- 
yond herself  might  come  of  her.  She 
was  somehow  ultimate ;  and  Nature  in 

15 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

the  eternity  of  evolution  disregards 
finalities.  After  her,  the  deluge — or 
perhaps  there  was  not  so  long  to  wait. 

There  was  a  tension,  too,  in  the  in- 
trospective silence,  and  Gordon  un- 
readily began  to  speak. 

"Well,  of  course  you're  a  thorough- 
bred, and  you  show  that.  And  of 
course  you're  appreciatively  artistic — 
you  care  about  all  beauties  naturally, 
and  you're  nervous  enough  and  luxuri- 
ous enough  to  be  petulant  over  little 
every-day  discords  and  might-have- 
beens.  So  you  separate  the  dream- 
world from  the  world  of  fact  more 
widely  than  they  truly  are.  .  .  .  You 
dislike  fact  because  you  fear  it  a  little. 
16 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

When  you  want  anything  you  want  it 
violently,  immediately — you'd  fight  for 
it  if  you  could  bring  yourself  to  begin 
fighting.  But  the  inertia  of  things  par- 
alyzes you,  and  so  you  accept  your 
small  failures  a  bit  tragically.  .  .  . 
You  think  you're  practical  and  rather 
cynical,  but  you're  not.  You  tell  your- 
self stories  at  night,  with  no  actual  peo- 
ple in  them.  .  .  .  You've  never  had 
a  friend,  because  understanding  implies 
a  dialect,  and  you're  inarticulate — you 
haven't  any  words  for  things.  .  .  . 
Somebody  must  have  hurt  you  rather 
badly  a  good  while  ago — a  man,  per- 
haps. And  you  take  a  pleasure  in  r^id-. 
i 

ing  and  hugging  Spartan,  foxes,    .   .   . 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

Lately  you've  been  happier  than  ever  in 
what  you've  been  taught  to  call  the  sub- 
ordination of  your  will  .  .  .  which 
is  really  the  comfort  of  not  needing  any 
will  yourself  because  you  can  borrow 
at  pleasure." 

He  stopped,  startled.  The  wind  of 
his  speech  had  overblown  discretion. 
The  girl  was  sitting  erect,  wide-eyed, 
looking  straight  at  him  with  a  kind  of 
horror. 

"How  do  you  know?"  she  almost 
whispered.  "How  do  you  know?" 

"I  don't  know.  I  meant  to  stop 
sooner.  I'm  awfully  sorry — " 

She  went  on  without  noticing  him: 
"How  dared  you  see  so  much,  or  tell 
18 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

me  what  you  saw?  .  .  .  Well,  I 
brought  it  on  myself.  And  now  I've  got 
to  know  and  admit  that  you  exist — oh, 
why  couldn't  you  have  stayed  away?" 
Then,  wearily,  lying  back  in  the  big 
chair,  "Of  course  it's  all  true — and  if 
you  know  those  things,  you  under- 
stand everything  there  is  of  me.  .  .  . 
Do  you  understand  me?" 

He  caught  at  a  straw:  "Do  you 
remember  Stevenson's  answer  to  that 
question?" 

She  shook  her  head. 

"  {God  knows,  madam ;  I  should 
think  it  highly  improbable.' ' 

"That's  like  a  man,"  she  said  with 
sudden  scorn,  "to  break  into  a  friend's 

19 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

house,  wanting  nothing,  and  then  run 
away  without  showing  his  face,  as  if 
he  might  have  been  a  thief."  Both 
were  silent  a  moment,  the  man  seeking 
foothold,  the  woman  expression.  Then 
she  looked  up  quietly.  "Are  you  hon- 
est?" 

Gordon  met  her  eyes.  "I  don't 
know.  I  mean  to  be.  At  least  I 
haven't  been  playing  tricks  on  you,  and 
I  believe  all  I  said.  I'm  sorry."  He 
smiled,  adding:  "To  be  honest,  as  this 
world  goes,  is  to  be  one  man  out  of  a 
thousand." 

She  laughed  easily.  "I'm  not  an 
Ophelia,  Mr.  Gordon." 

"You  might  be  proud  to  be.  Ophelia 
20 


never  hVd  a  square  deal.  Hamlet's  at- 
titude was  like  this :  'If  you're  worth  it, 
I'll  love  you;  but  you  must  be  worth 
it  alone,  without  love.  I  renounce  your 
unworthiness.'  No  woman  could  stand 
that." 

"And  so,"  retorted  Miss  Dome,  with 
the  full  feminine  contempt  for  femi- 
nine failure,  "she  went  crazy  and 
'drowned  herself.  I  never  met  a  man 
who  didn't  defend  Ophelia  and  wail 
over  Desdemona — except  John  Hud- 
son," she  added. 

"Shakespeare!  ma'de  a  mistake  in  the 

conclusion,    though,"    Gordon    coolly 

continued.      "Ophelia    wasn't    really 

drowned.    She   recovered  her  reason 

21 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

and  very  reasonably  married  Fortin- 
bras  of  Norway." 

"Shakespeare?"  asked  the  deep 
voice  of  John  Hudson.  "Good  morn- 
ing. Great  day,  isn't  it?" 

"We'd  about  decided  it  was  too 
warm  for  Shakespeare,"  Gordon  an- 
swered, rising  to  shake  hands.  "And 
we  thought  of  turning  to  the  musical 
glasses.  How  does  that  strike  you?" 
He  looked  vaguely  about  for  a  steward. 

"Good  idea,"  said  Hudson,  motion- 
ing to  the  man  who  stood  behind  him 
with  four  tall  tumblers  on  a  tray. 


22 


Ill 

'HERE  was  every  obvious 
reason  why  Richard  Gordon 
should  have  bridled  his 
mushroom  intimacy  with  John  Hud- 
son's fiancee.  But  he  did  nothing  of  the 
sort.  He  was  one  of  those  to  whom  the 
exertion  of  will  in  cold  blood,  antici- 
pating some  demand  of  the  future, 
is  almost  unconquerably  distasteful. 
Moreover,  his  judgment  hung  in  puz- 
zled suspense  over  the  situation.  He 
was  not  lacking  in  what  is  known  as  Ex- 
perience ;  and  a  bachelor  in  his  middle 
23 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

twenties,  if  he  does  not  admit  ignor- 
ance of  the  Duel  of  the  Sexes,  tends  to 
consider  himself  omniscient  therein. 
But  this  relation  was  a  new  thing,  too 
eclectic  for  ordinary  friendship,  too 
frank  for  flirtation.  They  disdained  or 
explained  laughingly  the  parlor-magic 
of  romance.  In  the  smiling  memory  of 
his  boy-loves,  Gordon  understood  per- 
fectly that  he  was  not  in  love  with  his 
acquaintance  of  days  merely  because 
the  sight  of  her  unsteadied  his  pulses, 
because  her  personality  hung  about  him 
like  a  fragrance,  even  because  at  times 
his  nerves  ached  with  the  sheer  sense  of 
her  womanhood  as  they  had  done  for 
no  woman  before.  But  he  understood 

24 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

equally  that  he  might  have  been,  or 
that,  given  proximity  and  response,  he 
might  yet  be.  That  way  lay  only  im- 
possibility and  trouble;  for  her  in- 
tended marriage  was  evidently  no  mere 
affair  of  convenience.  Still,  if  he  were 
laying  up  for  himself  any  more  than 
evanescent  regret,  he  was  free  to  prefer 
risk  to  renunciation,  so  long  as  he  kept 
that  risk  entirely  his  own.  The  thought 
that  Audrey  might  grow  uncomfort- 
ably to  care  for  him  he  faced  for  one 
moment  of  sick  horror,  before  kicking 
it  ignominiously  into  the  limbo  of  sub- 
consciousness.  He  had  not  misunder- 
stood or  magnified  her  confession;  and 
he  realized  that  she  had  said  all  she 

25 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

meant.  And  so  his  meditation  turned 
in  a  circle  whose  center  was  the  one 
resolution  he  could  form — to  be  honest 
from  hour  to  hour,  tell  the  truth  in 
word  and  deed  and  silence,  and  to  ad- 
mit the  existence  of  no  bridge  which 
the  time  had  not  arrived  for  crossing. 

Meanwhile  their  companionship  was 
wholly  a  delight.  Comprehension  had 
sprung  full-armed  from  their  common 
intelligence  almost  at  the  first.  Already 
they  could  talk  of  anything,  as  friends 
talk — in  broken  half-phrases,  sure  of 
hitting  the  mark  with  the  most  careless 
shot.  He  could  start  nowhere  but  she 
was  there  almost  before  him,  pointing 
gleefully  toward  the  next  goal.  And  ex- 
26 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

cept  for  that  one  break,  it  had  all  been 
wholly  and  wholesomely  normal.  In 
the  early  stages  of  relation,  the  woman 
is  warden  of  the  personalities.  Miss 
Dome  locked  those  gates.  But  the  two 
multiplied  the  joy  of  discovery  over 
unimagined  common  properties;  and 
their  mutual  dialect  soared  like  a 
driven  golf-ball,  rolling  to  rest  upon 
new  levels  of  understanding  only  to  be 
swept  again  skyward.  They  spent  more 
hours  together  than  Gordon  intended 
or  understood. 

When  a  girl  wishes  to  be  alone  with 

a  man,  that  event  simply  takes  place. 

Miss  Dome  was  actually  oftener  with 

him  than  with  Hudson ;  and  the  latter's 

27 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

easy,  almost  cordial,  acquiescence  in 
this  state  of  affairs  filled  Gordon  with 
a  puzzled,  half-shameful  consciousness 
that  he  himself  would  have  both  felt 
and  acted  differently.  When  he  was  not 
hawking  after  fancies  with  Audrey,  he 
was  generally  in  the  company  of  one  or 
more  of  her  party.  Miss  Folcombe 
gravely  liked  him  for  his  tactful  whim- 
sicality and  the  old-school  courtliness 
which  he  assumed  in  deference  to  her, 
as  he  would  have  dressed  for  dinner  at 
her  house.  Hudson  liked  him,  without 
admitting  it,  for  his  fun,  his  intelli- 
gence, and  his  frank  readiness  to  de- 
fend an  opinion.  And  Gordon,  in  spite 
of  the  growing  jealousy  that  snarled 
28 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

and  bristled  at  the  heels  of  acquaint- 
ance, returned  the  liking  with  interest 
of  respect. 

John  Hudson  was  an  iron  man  of  the 
Iron  Age  with  a  fine  development  of 
the  better  ferrous  qualities.  From  no 
one  knew  where,  equipped  no  one 
knew  how,  he  had  made  himself  at 
thirty-two  the  already  wealthy  head  of 
the  great  business  which  was  his  per- 
fect expression;  and  since  the  social 
ladder  is  now  so  generally  replaced  by 
an  express  elevator,  had  won  the  po- 
sition as  he  displayed  the  specifications 
of  a  gentleman.  A  Harvard  man  al- 
ready cognizant  of  the  facts  might 
have  said  that  he  showed  the  lack  of 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

college;  but  the  discrimination,  if  true, 
was  hardly  to  Hudson's  disadvantage. 
Neither  appearance,  manner  nor 
speech  evidenced  that  himself  instead 
of  his  mother  had  trained  him.  Success 
was  his  one  god,  and  volition  was  his 
prophet.  He  had  never  found  choice 
difficult  nor  conquest  impossible.  Ut- 
terly without  that  mental  binocularity 
which  makes  Hamlets  and  heroes,  he 
was  immediately  able.  While  others 
delayed  decision  or  debated  ways  and 
means,  he  turned  the  search-light  of  his 
intelligence  upon  the  instant  object  and 
moved  thither,  unhesitant,  unhurried. 
Twenty  times  a  day  it  was  Hudson  who 
did  the  thing  which  was  to  be  done.  A 
30 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

hot  rather  than  a  cold  man,  his  emo- 
tion when  uncurbed  was  never  unbri- 
dled. And  now  that  a  woman  had  set 
the  crown  upon  his  victories,  he  was  ad- 
mirably himself,  master  of  surrounding 
circumstance,  caparisoned  in  the  pan- 
oply of  achievement. 

"What  I  like  about  golf,"  he  said 
once,  "is  that  it's  not  a  game  of  chance, 
nor  even  a  game  of  skill — it's  a  game  of 


nerve." 


"Of  nerves,  do  you  mean?"  asked 
Audrey. 

"No — nerve.  Any  duffer  has  skill 
enough  to  make  any  individual  shot  in 
the  game.  Every  day  he  makes  par- 
ticular holes  in  figures  that  would  foot 

31 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

up  into  a  record.  Well,  why  doesn't  he 
keep  it  up  all  the  way  round  and  win 
out?" 

"Because  he  knows  he  can't,"  said 
Audrey  slowly,  as  if  the  words  meant 
many  things  to  her. 

"Simply  because  he  loses  his  nerve. 
He  makes  a  fluke  and  gets  sore;  or  he 
makes  a  lucky  stroke  and  gets  rattled; 
or,  as  you  say,  he  thinks  he  can't,  and 
his  nerve  cracks.  It's  no  use  just  to  con- 
trol yourself  and  not  swear  out  loud — 
you  mustn't  want  to  swear — or  to  hur- 
rah. You  can't  be  bothered  controlling 
yourself.  There  mustn't  one  thing  enter 
your  mind  except  where  that  ball  has 
got  to  go  next,  and  how  you  propose  to 

32 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

get  it  there.  Or  else,  you  lose.  That's 
golf." 

Said  Miss  Folcombe:  "If  I  under- 
stand rightly,  the  game  demands  con- 
fidence and  tranquillity." 

"Not  quite  that.  Take  Audrey,  for 
instance.  She  plays  well  until  she  gets 
into  a  tournament.  Then  she  gets  think- 
ing how  much  she  wants  to  win,  and 
how  pretty  the  cup  is,  and  when  she's 
driving  number  five,  she's  planning  a 
long  putt  for  a  four  on  the  eighteenth. 
Then  she  flukes,  and  her  nerve  goes." 
He  looked  at  the  end  of  his  cigar,  and 
added  in  the  voice  of  soliloquy:  "And, 
after  all,  that's  the  way  with  every- 
thing." 

33 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

"But  the  links  of  life,"  Gordon  sug- 
gested airily,  "are  full  of  blind  drives 
and  unfair  lies,  beset  by  cross  winds — 
and  there's  always  some  burrowing 
mole  to  raise  a  hump  on  the  green." 

Hudson  had  an  odd  habit  of  looking 
into  the  last  speaker's  eyes,  instead  of 
into  space,  while  he  considered  a  mat- 
ter. 

He  did  so  now  for  a  moment,  then 
fastened  upon  the  concrete  objective: 
"If  there's  a  blind  drive,  it's  up  to  you 
to  know  the  course.  There's  a  club  and 
a  stroke  for  every  lie.  If  the  wind's 
against  you,  play  low  and  let  it  spoil 
the  other  fellow.  I've  no  stock  in  hard- 
luck  stories.  One  fellow's  luck  bal- 

34 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

ances  another's  if  they  play  it  right. 
The  only  excuse  is  to  make  good,  and 
then  there's  no  need  of  excuses."  He 
puffed  slowly,  short  thick  clouds.  "I've 
a  lot  of  men  under  me — all  kinds. 
When  I  hire  a  man  I  put  him  on  his 
honor.  I  say  practically:  'You're  sup- 
posed to  be  able  to  do  what  I  want 
done.  Go  ahead  and  produce  the  goods. 
If  you  do,  I  don't  have  to  know  how;  if 
you  don't,  I  don't  care  why.'  Then  I  let 
him  alone.  It  works  better  than  watch- 
ing men  and  fussing  over  them." 

Audrey  crowed  with  delight.  Here 
was  Gordon  beaten  at  his  own  game  of 
analogy  by  a  man  to  whom  metaphor 
did  not  exist. 

35 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

Miss  Folcombe  asked:  "But  is  your 
trust  never  abused?  Have  you  never 
been  cheated?" 

"Sometimes,"  said  Hudson  slowly; 
"every  man  is.  But  not  in  the  same  way 


twice." 


IV 

ETWEEN  betrothal  and 
marriage  there  comes  to 
every  delicately  nurtured 
girl  a  reaction  of  panic  uncertainty. 
The  visage  of  the  irrevocable  daunts 
her;  the  glare  of  new  sensation  sud- 
denly unveiled  blurs  her  blank  inno- 
cence and  dazzles  her  artificially 
nourished  understanding.  She  is 
haunted  by  the  stagnant  suspicion  that 
she  may  have  discovered  not  the  one 
man  of  her  instinctive  seeking,  but 
merely  Man  in  an  opportune  embodi- 

37 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

ment.  If  the  Princess  had  been  kissed 
into  awakening  by  some  compatriot  of 
the  true  Prince  arrayed  in  his  uni- 
form— !  And  to  lay  this  specter  she 
may,  in  her  isolation,  resort  to  curious 
and  irregular  experiments.  With  this 
distemper  the  man  most  concerned  is 
naturally  powerless  to  deal.  It  is  a  case 
for  the  mother  or,  better  still,  some 
safely  inoculated  contemporary.  Want- 
ing these,  its  manifestations  may  range 
from  the  most  ephemeral  cloud-shad- 
ow, through  all  the  varieties  of  the 
Lovers'  Quarrel,  down  to  the  miserable 
discovery  of  a  mistake.  The  entire 
phenomenon  is,  of  course,  undreamed 
of  in  the  philosophy  of  communication, 

38 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

and  forms  part  of  those  unmentioned 
arcana  whereof  the  anonymous  free- 
masonry of  married  men  assumes  a  tacit 
experience. 

On  the  evening  of  the  mid-ocean 
musical  Audrey  was  effervescent  with 
the  uneasy  premonition  of  excitement. 
Those  eagerly  officious  organizers  of 
amusement  who  subsist  in  every  com- 
munity had,  of  course,  pounced  insist- 
ently upon  Gordon,  a  mild  and  downy 
lion  cub  obvious  to  the  hunter.  His 
flat  refusal  to  play  his  violin  was  only 
thinly  padded  with  some  sentences 
about  strings  and  sea  air.  But  he  was 
good-naturedly  willing  to  play  unlim- 
ited accompaniments  and  he  permitted 

39 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

himself  to  be  featured  alone  at  the 
piano. 

"This  kind  of  thing,"  he  remarked 
during  the  day,  "gives  me  a  long,  slow 
pain.  But  I  suppose  a  man  had  better 
let  himself  be  made  a  lap-dog  of  than 
make  a  pig  of  himself." 

As  she  entered  the  over-decorated 
room  Audrey  was  more  excited  than 
she  cared  to  realize.  She  anticipated 
something  more  than  esthetic  pleasure 
from  Gordon's  playing — just  what,  she 
was  unwilling  to  formulate.  Needless 
apprehension  of  being  too  early  had 
made  the  party  a  trifle  late;  and  the 
only  remaining  seats  were  far  to  the 
front.  A  glance  at  the  program  stirred 
40 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

her  with  puzzled  surmises,  for  Gor- 
don's choice  of  music  was  conven- 
tional to  the  point  of  irony — a  couple 
of  familiar  Chopin  Nocturnes,  Men- 
delssohn's Spring  Song  and  an  arrange- 
ment of  the  Toreador  March.  She 
chattered  nervously  to  Hudson,  paid  a 
politely  punctilious  inattention  to  the 
music,  and  wondered  dully  if  the  pulse 
in  her  throat  were  visible  when  Gor- 
don's turn  came  to  play. 

The  event  was  a  chilling  disappoint- 
ment. He  played  rhythmically,  with  a 
student's  unfailing  precision  of  touch, 
showing  an  adequate  emotional  intelli- 
gence and  a  technical  skill  in  reserve 
over  the  pieces  he  had  selected — but 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

absolutely  nothing  more.  There  was  no 
spiritual  salt  in  it;  nothing  of  the  man, 
nothing  of  what  the  self-styled  "mu- 
sical" ignorantly  worship  under  the 
title  of  Temperament.  It  was  the  per- 
formance of  a  Bachelor  of  Music, 
faultlessly  unsatisfactory,  perfectly  aca- 
demic. 

"Oh,  I  wish  he'd  play!"  she  mut- 
tered impatiently,  as  the  crowd  ap- 
plauded the  Spring  Song  with  tenta- 
tive enthusiasm. 

Miss  Folcombe  replied:  "I  think  he 
plays  very  nicely  indeed."  And  Hud- 
son said  heavily:  "Why,  what's  the 
matter  with  his  playing?  I  think  he's 
mighty  good.  No  nonsense  about  him, 
42 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

no  matinee  mannerism,  and  he's  thor- 
oughly up  to  his  work.  I  like  it." 

"Oh,  I  don't  know,"  petulantly; 
"there's  nothing  to  it,  somehow.  I  wish 
— I  do  wish  he'd  play  his  violin." 

Perhaps  it  was  impotence  to  explain 
that  annoyed  her  so  disproportionately. 

Hudson  looked  into  her  eyes  a  mo- 
ment. Then  he  said  quietly:  "He  shall, 
if  you  say  so." 

"Aunt  Elma  and  I  have  both  tried." 
A  flavor  of  dilute  defiance  italicized 
her  tone. 

Hudson  nodded,  and  the  music  began 
again.  When  it  ended  he  rose,  made 
his  way  to  the  piano,  and  turning,  said 
in  his  resonant  voice : 

43 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

"Ladies  and  gentlemen,  there  is  an- 
other pleasure  in  store  for  us  which,  I 
think  you  will  agree,  is  as  welcome  as 
it  is  unexpected.  Mr.  Gordon  has 
kindly  consented  to  play  for  us  on  his 
violin." 

Amid  the  swelling  crackle  of  ap- 
plause Gordon  stood,  angrily  startled, 
confused,  irresolute.  He  looked  from 
Audrey  to  Hudson,  and  his  eyes  nar- 
rowed. Then  with  an  assentive  gesture 
he  left  the  room. 

"How  dared  youl"  Audrey  whis- 
pered. "I  wish  he'd  refused." 

"He  couldn't  help  himself,"  said 
Hudson,  utterly  without  complacency. 

"He  might  have  made  a  scene." 
44 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

"He  might  not." 

Gordon  returned  presently  with  his 
violin  and  some  sheets  of  music.  He 
came  up  to  them,  bowed,  and  handed 
the  music,  open,  to  Audrey. 

"Will  you  make  amends  by  playing 
for  me?"  he  said,  looking  beyond  her. 

She  glanced  down  at  the  score.  It 
was  the  second  movement  of  Wieni- 
awski's  B-flat  concerto. 

"If  you're  not  afraid  of  my  disgrac- 
ing you  .  .  .  you  can  easily  find  .  .  . 
yes,  I  will  if  you  wish  it." 

He  had  already  turned  away.  She 
pulled  the  big  diamond  from  her 
third  finger,  handed  it  to  Hudson,  and 
followed  Gordon  to  the  piano. 

45 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

"How  did  you  know  I  played  that?" 
she  asked,  settling  herself  on  the  stool. 

"You  always  produce  the  goods,"  he 
answered,  with  his  quaint  smile. 

Somehow,  the  phrase  jarred.  She 
twisted  her  lithe  shoulders  in  a  manner 
which  Miss  Folcombe  noticed  with  as- 
tonishment and  grief. 

"Now,  don't  display  your  accomp- 
lishments with  the  pedal,"  said  the 
voice  above  her.  He  tuned  familiarly, 
his  eyes  passing  over  the  party-colored 
crowd  profuse  with  inexpressive 
smiles.  Then  they  fixed  on  infinity,  as 
he  raised  his  violin.  He  marked  the 
time  to  Audrey  with  his  bow,  and  be- 
gan. 

46 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

What  magic  dwelt  in  those  few 
pieces  of  dry  wood,  carefully  wrought 
by  an  old  man  of  Italy  two  hundred 
years  since?  And  what  spell  was  come 
upon  this  brown  boy  with  the  sunburnt 
hair  and  the  wide  hazel  eyes,  swaying 
unaffectedly  to  the  rhythm  of  his  gra- 
cile  bow?  The  golden  wonder  of  his 
tone  came  straight  out  of  the  boy's 
heart  of  him  into  the  guarded  silences 
where  his  hearers  lived.  It  was  not 
loud,  but  the  room  had  not  space  to 
contain  it.  It  radiated  everywhere, 
longing,  imperious,  irresistible,  tran- 
scending sense.  Was  it  sound  or  light 
or  language?  Audrey  followed  subcon- 
sciously, her  eyes  and  hands  involun- 

47 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

tary  in  their  work,  her  whole  self  teem- 
ing with  the  shower  of  melody.  The 
sweet  of  it  ached  over  her  in  waves.  All 
his  youth  was  in  it,  his  sure  gladness, 
his  courage  of  belief  in  what  the  music 
meant — glamour,  and  the  sharp  mys- 
tery of  dream;  the  sad  vision  of  utter 
beauty  impossibly  beyond  all  worlds; 
the  freshness  of  a  love  unfought  for,  a 
laughter  tremulous  with  tears,  a  light 
that  never  was  on  sea  or  land. 

The  lingering  cadence  curved  and 
closed.  The  shock  of  the  applause  re- 
stored her.  Gordon  was  tuning  again, 
the  strings  close  to  his  ear,  his  face  hag- 
gard with  the  strain  of  expression.  She 
looked  up  at  him  timidly  and  a  ready 


n 


N 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

smile  blew  away  the  ashes  of  the  fire  in 
his  eyes. 

"Now,  play  me  something  of  your 
own,"  she  said  monotonously. 

He  looked  down  at  her,  doubting. 
In  the  tail  of  his  eye  he  saw  Hudson 
make  as  if  to  rise.  He  tossed  his  head 
with  a  sudden  gesture  of  decision  and 
bowed  acquiescence  to  the  imperative 
crowd.  Hudson  sat  down  again. 

"If  I  play  my  own  music,"  said  the 
voice  in  the  air,  "I  must  do  it  without 
accompaniment." 

She  looked  up,  wondering  if  she  only 
imagined  the  overtone  of  implication; 
but  he  was  turned  half  from  her,  his 

49 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

bow  ready,  his  eyes  puckered  as  if  in 
the  effort  of  remembering. 

The  violin  is,  of  course,  the  most  in- 
timate of  instruments;  and  a  violin  un- 
accompanied is  almost  indelicate  in  the 
nude  privacy  of  its  emotion.  As  she  lis- 
tened, Audrey  felt  a  sense  of  shock,  al- 
most of  shame.  The  presence  of  these 
many  people  was  like  a  profanity — it 
seemed  monstrous  that  they  should  lis- 
ten to  what  she  heard.  Then  the  spell 
of  the  music  possessed  her,  the  other 
presences  were  not;  and  she  lost  the 
sense  of  hearing,  conscious  only  of  a 
revelation  that  she  understood. 

First  came  a  slow,  pure  clematis  of 
melody,  delicate,  archly  fair,  inno- 
50 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

cently  unfolding,  shyly  confiding  to  a 
close.  Then  a  rhythmic,  vigorous  sec- 
ond underran  it,  overbore  it,  nearly  ob- 
literated it,  and  the  duality  became  a 
struggle — a  struggle  with  an  ache  in  it. 
The  melody  returned  alone,  but  now, 
by  some  ineffable  softening  and  widen- 
ing of  the  tone,  its  purity  seemed  to 
have  taken  on  yearning — to  have  suf- 
fered unselfishness.  Then,  with  a  hur- 
ried blur  of  dissonances,  the  struggle 
rearose,  in  the  minor  this  time,  con- 
fused among  altered  thirds  and  sixths, 
all  freshness  buried  in  an  agony  of 
breathless  endeavor,  a  groping  after 
life  and  light — and  then,  out  of  the 
weary  vortex  the  melody  took  wing 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

once  more,  confident,  doubtless  of  it- 
self, tried  and  taught  and  wise.  And 
before  it  ended,  the  second  came  in 
quietly  and  the  two  closed  together, 
leaning  upon  each  other  consonantly, 
each  clearly  heard,  their  blending  a 
caress.  It  might  have  meant  many 
things — among  others,  the  inner  history 
of  a  young  girl's  awakening. 

As  he  finished,  and  the  noise  broke 
out  afresh,  Gordon  carefully  laid  down 
his  violin.  He  glanced  at  Audrey. 
Then  he  took  his  bow  in  both  hands 
and  raised  it  at  arm's  length  facing  the 
crowd,  held  it  so  an  instant,  then 
snapped  it  between  his  fingers.  The  ap- 
plause stopped  short.  People  looked  at 
52 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

one  another.  And  Gordon,  his  violin 
under  his  arm,  went  quickly  out  of  the 
room. 

He  laid  the  instrument  away,  and 
hurried  into  the  windy  darkness  of  the 
deck,  his  heart  clamorous  in  his  ears, 
his  mind  tossing.  He  had  done  it  now. 
He  no  more  doubted  the  comprehen- 
sion of  his  message  than  if  he  had  writ- 
ten it  on  paper;  and  what  was  to  come 
next?  As  he  turned  a  corner  a  presence 
met  him  out  of  the  darkness — a  swift 
shadow,  a  fragrance,  and  two  wonder- 
ful wet  eyes. 

"When  did  you  write  that?"  she 
asked.  Her  voice  seemed  to  come  from 
far  off. 

53 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

"Yesterday.  You  knew.  Did  you  un- 
derstand?" 

In  the  gloom  her  face  was  dimly 
visible — an  expression  without  definite 
features,  strangely  white  and  drawn. 

"I  knew  you  wrote  it  to  me.  And  I 
understood.  But  you  must  word 
things."  A  pause.  Then,  "Why  did 
you  break  your  bow?" 

"I'm  not  quite  sure.  Some  way  or 
other,  it  was  the  thing  to  do." 

Her  breath  quickened.  "Because 
you  had  been  forced  to  play?" 

"Partly  that.  And  partly — well,  you 
drink  some  healths  in  broken  glass — 
and  I  couldn't  break  poor  old  Tony — 


so—" 


54 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

She  laid  a  hand  on  each  of  his  shoul- 
ders, looking  him  full  in  the  eyes  until 
he  felt  a  dizziness.  Then  she  leaned 
to  him  slowly,  and  kissed  him  lightly 
on  the  lips. 

Then  she  was  in  his  arms,  a  wild 
thing  palsied  with  the  madness  of  aban- 
donment, sobbing  with  surrender.  And 
Gordon,  sick  and  shaken  with  her,  was 
murmuring  immemorable  sayings 
known  from  all  time  of  men  and 
women,  that  need  not  be  written  down 
again. 

Suddenly  she  struggled  away  and 
covered  her  face  with  her  hands. 

"It's  all  wrong,"  she  moaned,  "all 
wrong  and  bad  and  hopeless  and  im- 

55 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

possible.  Oh,  why  couldn't  we  have 
kept  away  from  each  other?  Why  must 
this  thing  happen  to  us?"  She  caught 
his  shoulders  again.  "Say  that  you  love 
me,"  she  said  hoarsely. 

"I  love  you,"  Gordon  repeated 
steadily,  "and  I  take  on  myself  all  that 
that  means ;  all  that  it  needs,  because  I 
know." 

"God  bless  you,  dear,"  she  whis- 
pered, lips,  hands  and  eyes  his  own. 
Then  she  pushed  him  violently  away, 
crying,  "Oh,  it's  all  wrong — all 
wrong!"  and  turned  and  ran  through 
the  shadows. 

Gordon  turned  his  face  upward.   It 
was  beginning  to  rain. 
$6 


HE  Morning  After"  is  rap- 
idly becoming  a  legitimate 
phrase  in  the  language  of 
the  intemperate  American  People ;  and 
since  the  law  of  action  and  reaction, 
among  many  others,  obtains  alike  in 
physics  and  in  metaphysics,  the  signifi- 
cance of  the  phrase  has  far  outspread 
any  reference  to  mere  bodily  intoxica- 
tion. It  belongs  equally  to  that  dry 
numbness  which  is  the  price  of  a  glori- 
ous hour,  however  natural  and  holy, 
and  which  too  often  irks  eager  youth 

57 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

with  a  fear  that  the  wine  of  the  spirit 
must  be  an  evil  thing  because  we  pale 
after  the  sweet  flush  of  it.  In  the  low 
light  of  every-day,  visions  just  past  suf- 
fer nonentity,  as  a  fire  is  put  out  by  the 
sun.  Common  sense  usurps,  and  sensi- 
bility turns  acid.  It  was  just  after  the 
glory  of  Gethsemane  that  Peter  very 
humanly  denied  his  God.  John  must 
have  had  the  same  experience;  but  he 
knew  himself  and  waited  without  fool- 
ish words  until  it  passed.  Among 
women,  perhaps  because  of  their  phys- 
ical innocences,  the  understanding  of 
this  trouble  is  dangerously  less  general 
than  among  men. 
Wherefore,  in  the  casual  gathering 

58 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

of  the  party  after  breakfast,  Richard 
and  Audrey  gave  each  other  unde- 
served credit  for  an  astonishing  power 
of  unconsciousness.  There  was  not  the 
faintest  adumbration  of  any  mutuality 
in  the  atmosphere.  The  night  before 
simply  had  never  been.  And  these  two, 
looking  out  through  the  rain-flecked 
glass  over  a  gray  despondency  of  sea 
and  sky,  had  absolutely  no  more  reserve 
beneath  their  tranquil  contributions  to 
the  community  of  mild  boredom  than 
had  Miss  Folcombe  and  John  Hud- 
son. 

Miss  Folcombe  resurrected  from  a 
magazine  to  remark:  "These  articles 
would  interest  you,  John — by  the  presi- 

59 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

dents  of  the  various  universities  on 
College  Men  in  Business" 

"I'll  look  at  that  one  when  you've 
finished.  There'd  be  more  in  it  for  me, 
though,  if  there  were  more  business 
men  in  colleges." 

"I've  meant  to  ask  you,  some  time," 
Gordon  put  in,  "what  you  think  of  the 
contention  that  a  college  training  gives 
a  man  acquaintances,  and  advantages 
in  using  his  head,  that  compensate, 
when  he  finally  gets  to  work,  for  the 
four  years'  time." 

"There's  nothing  in  it,"  replied 
Hudson  promptly.  "I've  never  seen  a 
college  graduate  show  any  compensa- 
tion for  his  scattering  of  energy  and  his 
60 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

inexperience  of  things  that  are  a-b-c 
to  the  office-boy.  It'll  be  college  or 
business  for  my  son  when  he  gets  old 
enough  to  choose — the  combination 
isn't  good  economy." 

"You're  prejudiced,"  said  Audrey, 
looking  out  at  the  rain. 

"Naturally,  but  my  prejudices  never 
dictate  in  a  practical  judgment.  I 
rather  tend  to  overrate  college  in  gen- 
eral, like  most  men  who  haven't  had  it. 
But  this  is  a  matter  of  fact.  For  the 
professional  man  it  all  pays  in  the  long 
run — friendships,  mental  training, 
education  by  the  surroundings — it  all 
counts  in.  But  if  a  fellow's  going  into 
business,  college  won't  be  worth  while. 
61 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

It  isn't  reasonable  that  it  should.  He 
forms  a  lot  of  footless  habits,  and  de- 
velops tastes  that  he  can't  afford  time 
or  money  for,  and  learns  a  lot  of  things 
from  books  and  book-men  that  won't 
be  any  use  to  him.  And  then  he  has  the 
handicap  of  four  good  years  and  more 
or  less  nonsense  to  unlearn.  Why,  the 
average  college  man  thinks  it's  of  no 
importance  when  he  pays  his  bills." 

"He  gets  over  that  pretty  quickly, 
though,"  said  Gordon.  "I  don't  believe 
there's  any  dishonesty  about  it — and 
the  result  teaches  him  sense." 

"That's  just  it — he  regards  honesty 
as  a  virtue,  instead  of  a  matter  like 
washing  his  hands.  He  has  no  concep- 
62 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

tion  that  a  hundred  dollars  to-day  isn't 
a  hundred  dollars  a  year  from  now. 
That's  just  the  trouble — he  makes  it  all 
ethical  and  personal,  and  it's  discourte- 
ous to  send  him  a  bill.  No,  the  whole 
theory  is  university  advertising — 
there's  nothing  in  it." 

"That's  reasonable,  but  I  think  it's 
extreme.  You  don't  really  think  that 
college  is  all  duns  and  cigarettes.  It 
isn't  the  college  man  who  defaults  for 
half  a  million  after  ten  irreproachable 
years — it' s  your  bred-in-the-bone  ex- 
office-boy  with  strictly  business  ideals 
and  a  hunch  on  the  market.  And  then, 
a  thoroughbred  is  better  stuff  to  handle, 
all  through — he  may  need  more  licking 

63 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

into  shape,  but  you  know  you're  not 
wasting  labor  on  shoddy  material." 

Said  Miss  Folcombe:  "Isn't  that, 
after  all,  the  real  point,  John?  Educa- 
tion aside,  the  collegian  is  more  likely 
to  be  a  man  of  family;  and  blood  will 
tell,  you  know,  in  anything." 

"Not  a  bit  of  it,"  Audrey  spoke  with 
sudden  emphasis.  "John  is  right.  Suc- 
cess is  what  counts.  All  that  talk  about 
family  as  a  sort  of  talisman  is  a  fiction. 
I  don't  believe  in  triumphant  failure 
and  spiritual  victory  and  all  that. 
Breeding  only  makes  a  man  more  sensi- 
tive, more  self-conscious,  more  open  to 
attack.  He  knows  when  he's  hurt,  and 
he  thinks  about  himself,  and  he  plays 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

according  to  the  rules.  He  fights  till 
he's  beaten,  just  like  any  man,  and  he's 
all  the  more  apt  to  be  beaten  for  mak- 
ing ballades  while  he  fences.  Cyrano 
makes  me  sick — if  he'd  been  a  man  in- 
stead of  a  coat-of-arms  he'd  have  had 
Roxane  for  himself.  And  then,  when 
your  gentle  very  perfect  knight  is 
licked,  he  watches  the  enemy  out  of 
sight  and  then  crows,  *I  am  the  captain 
of  my  soul,'  like  a  chicken.  He's  handi- 
capped by  knowing  that  he  has  a  soul. 
The  thing  I  hate  most  on  earth  is  that 
I'm  a  Dome  and  can't  help  it." 

Miss    Folcombe's    deity   was    blas- 
phemed. She  fairly  held  up  her  hands. 

65 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

"Why,  Audrey!"    Speech  was  inade- 
quate. 

"You're  all  wrong."  Richard  mount- 
ed his  pet  hobby.  "That's  sheer  cheap 
Jack-Londonism.  It  simply  isn't  so. 
Other  things  being  anywhere  near 
equal,  good  blood  wins  out  every  time. 
Your  thoroughbred  may  suffer  more, 
he  may  hate  to  fight,  he  may  be  sick 
afraid  all  through  it,  even — but  he 
won't  give  in.  The  other  fellow  likes 
fighting,  he  doesn't  feel  punishment, 
he'll  win  out  the  little  fights  that 
neither  cares  much  about.  But  when 
he  gets  to  the  point  where  he  does  feel 
hurt  and  knows  he's  past  hope — then 
he  lies  down.  The  yellow  streak  may 
66 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

be  deep  in,  but  if  you  get  down  to  it, 
it's  all  over.  Now,  the  gentleman  has 
been  in  despair  for  half  the  fight,  but 
he  hangs  on  in  spite  of  it.  He's  stronger 
than  himself."  He  turned  to  Audrey. 
"You  never  saw  a  cock-fight,  of  course. 
Well,  the  real  game  chicken  doesn't 
crow  when  he's  licked,  because  he  isn't 
licked  until  he's  dead.  That  modern 
theory  of  yours  sounds  brutally  grand, 
Miss  Dome,  but  all  fact  and  history  are 
against  it.  It's  just  a  decadent  bull- 
worship,  and  it's  false." 

Miss  Folcombe  almost  applauded. 
Hudson  had  been  looking  at  the  speak- 
ers in  turn.  He  came  in  deliberately: 

"No,  you're  half  right,  Gordon,  but 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

you  aren't  logical.  Granted  about 
horses  and  roosters — but  there's  no 
analogy  between  breeding  in  animals 
and  family  in  human  beings.  'Family' 
only  means  a  breeding  selection  not  for 
any  practical  qualities,  but  for  sensi- 
bility and  social  graces — and  of  course 
those  are  the  only  sure  results.  A  man 
bred  like  a  race-horse  might  turn  out 
as  well;  but  there's  no  such  thing  ex- 
cept by  accident,  don't  you  see?  And 
anyway,  human  heredity  is  a  subject 
we  don't  know  much  about.  No,  your 
analogy  doesn't  hold  water.  History's 
against  you,  too.  Look  at  the  world's 
aristocracies  and  their  inevitable  losing 
fight  against  the  barbarian." 
68 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

"And  look  at  Thermopylae,  and 
Alfred,  and  Robert  Browning,  and 
Stevenson,  and  Washington,"  Gordon 
retorted.  "We're  splitting  on  a  defini- 
tion of  breeding,  that's  all.  Of  course, 
there  are  imitations,  but  'family' 
means  at  its  best  more  than  man-mil- 
linery, and  you  know  it.  We've  really 
agreed  on  the  meaning  of  the  word. 
You  know  about  the  business  side  of  it, 
and  I  don't  doubt  your  opinion  of  the 
college  product — but  you  take  the  Yale 
or  Harvard  man,  the  real  thing,  with 
his  traditions,  and  put  him  in  a  really 
tight  place  in  business  or  anywhere 
else — and  he  won't  fall  down.  Pure 
gold's  a  bit  soft  for  commercial  pur- 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

poses,  but  try  an  acid  on  it — haven't 
you  found  that  so?" 

"No,"  said  Hudson  slowly,  "I 
haven't  met  with  that  situation.  You 
see,  it's  this  way."  He  thought  a  mo- 
ment, his  eyes  steadily  on  Gordon's. 
"Every  man  has  his  limit.  Granting 
everything  you  say,  the  thoroughbred's 
limit  is  his  life;  the  ordinary  man's  is 
his  hope.  Well,  now,  in  nine  cases  out 
of  ten  your  thoroughbred  will  reach  his 
limit  first,  that's  all.  He'll  be  dead  be- 
fore the  other  man  begins  to  despair, 
because  the  chances  are  against  his  be- 
ing the  stronger.  Take  you  and  me,  for 
instance.  If  we  got  up  against  each 
other,  you  might  take  a  lot  of  beating 
70 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

— you  might  never  give  up.  I  don't 
know  just  where  my  despairing  point 
is  located.  But  I'd  be  likely  to  win  out 
because  I  shouldn't  waste  time  or 
thought  on  anything  but  landing  the 
next  blow  and  getting  my  weight  be- 
hind it.  Whereas  you'd  be  thinking  it 
all  over  all  the  time.  Take  last  night, 
for  instance." 

"Yes,"  Gordon  repeated,  "take  last 
night,  for  instance,"  adding,  with  a 
laugh,  "well,  your  argumentum  ad 
hominem  closes  the  discussion,  unless 
we  refer  to  wager  of  battle,  which 
Heaven  forfend!  I  believe  I'm  right, 
still,  but  I  can  see  that  there's  a  lot  in 
your  point  of  view." 

71 


"That's  the  trouble  with  you," 
Audrey  broke  in  wearily.  "You're  al- 
ways looking  at  the  other  man's  point 
of  view."  The  resentment  in  her  voice 
was  uncalled  for. 

A  few  minutes  later  the  exodus  for 
lunch  left  them  alone  a  moment,  and 
Audrey  caught  up  the  lapsed  reality 
as  if  the  last  twelve  hours  had  been  a 
momentary  interruption. 

"Listen,  Richard.  You  mustn't  do 
anything.  I'm  right  about  this.  It's  no 
use.  We  must  just — forget." 

"And  then?  You're  talking  non- 
sense, you  know." 

"What  are  you  going  to  do?" 
72 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

"Tell  John  Hudson  the  truth.  After 
that — we'll  see." 

"What's  the  use?  You  don't  know 
him.  No,  you  don't.  He'll  just  brush 
you  aside — oh,  you  mustn't  try  to  fight. 
Don't  make  it  worse  for  me  than  it  is. 
It  isn't  real — drop  it;  drop  it  now." 
There  was  only  a  dry  boredom  in  her 
voice. 

"It's  going  to  be  real — and  you  are 
going  to  do  the  hardest  thing  of  all — 
sit  still  and  do  nothing." 

"You  think  I  don't  know,  Richard 
.  .  .  oh,  I  don't  know  how  I  feel — 
can't  you  hold  me?  Why  don't  you 
make  me  do  something?  I — "  He 
stopped  her. 

73 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

"Don't  tell  me  that  now.  Tell  me 
you  trust  me.  It's  all  right." 

"I  do  trust  you."  She  was  somehow 
nearer  without  having  moved.  There 
was  no  mistaking  the  reckless  demand 
in  her  eyes. 

Life  strained  like  a  tuned  string.  On 
the  glass  one  raindrop  grew  too  heavy 
and  zigzagged  down  across  the  gray 
pane.  Gordon  began  mechanically 
hunting  for  his  handkerchief,  as  he  said 
lightly : 

"There's  a  certain  amount  of  day- 
light here." 

"Oh — you,  you!  That's  just  you  all 
over!"  Then,  with  burlesque  conven- 
tionality, "Really,  Mr.  Gordon,  we 
74 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

shall  be  late  for  our  luncheon,  you 
know."  She  swung  her  skirts  and  swept 
away.  Gordon  followed  laughingly. 
He  found  his  handkerchief  in  time  to 
hide  the  blood  that  was  running  from 
his  under-lip. 


yi 

H,  Hudson,  I've  something 
to  talk  over  with  you,  if 
that  log  will  continue  to 
work  a  while  without  your  supervi- 


sion." 


Hudson  turned  from  the  taffrail, 
wet,  red  and  genial.  "Hullo.  Where 
have  you  kept  yourself  all  afternoon? 
Sure,  fire  away,  if  you  can  make  me 
hear  in  this  wind." 

"I  can't.  Let's  go  down  in  the 
smoker.  If  we  want  wetness  we  can 
take  it  internally." 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

Hudson  followed  without  comment. 
Gordon  went  straight  to  a  little  corner 
table,  out  of  immediate  earshot  of  the 
narcotic  groups,  settled  into  the  leath- 
ered seat,  and  pressed  a  button. 

"Cigar?"  Hudson  offered  his  case. 

"Thanks,  I've  a  cigarette  going." 
Gordon  deliberately  manipulated  the 
siphon.  "Say  when  .  .  .  that  right?" 
He  half  filled  his  own  glass,  tasted  it, 
and  blew  a  deep  breath  of  thin  smoke. 
"Well,  here's  looking." 

"Happy  days,"  Hudson  touched 
glasses  carelessly,  and  leaned  back  to 
cut  his  cigar.  "What's  the  row?" 

Richard  leaned  forward  suddenly. 
"Hold  on  a  second — save  that  cigar- 

77 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

band  .  .  .  thanks.  My  kid  brother 
collects  them." 

To  the  uninitiated,  the  golfer's  wag- 
gle before  the  drive  appears  like  os- 
tentation of  skill.  Gordon  put  the 
cigar-band  elaborately  away,  flipped 
off  his  ashes  and  inhaled  again.  When 
he  spoke  his  tone  was  carefully  low, 
level  and  distinct. 

"I've  been  wanting  to  speak  to  you 
about  Miss  Dome." 

"We  won't  discuss  Miss  Dome." 
Hudson's  careless  finality  absolutely 
annihilated  the  topic.  Gordon  evenly 
went  on : 

"It's  a  very  simple  point.  I  think 
you  have  no  right  to  marry  her.  And 

78 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

so,  naturally,  you  are  not  going  to 
marry  her — for  the  reason  that,  in  spite 
of  the  great  qualities  which  I  should  be 
impertinent,  under  the  circumstances, 
to  dilate  upon,  you  are  not  the  right 
man  for  her.  It  isn't  to  be.  Is  that 
clear?" 

For  the  first  time  in  his  life  Hudson 
was  surprised  off  his  guard.  He  did 
not  know  how  to  meet  a  man  who  ac- 
tualized the  inconceivable.  He  showed 
no  sign,  looked  steadily  into  his  antago- 
nist's wide  eyes,  and  waited,  thinking 
hard.  Gordon  finished  his  drink  and 
resumed : 

"It's  really  beside  the  question,  but 
of  course  my  reason  for  knowing  this, 

79 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

and  for  speaking  to  you  of  it,  is  that  I 
am  the  one  right  man  in  the  world, 
myself.  I've  told  her  so,  of  course." 
He  smoked.  "The  situation  is  unfor- 
tunate, just  now,  for  us  all;  but  I 
thought  best  that  we  should  all  three 
possess  the  facts  in  the  case  right  away. 
That's  all." 

Hudson  had  found  the  immediate 
thing  to  be  done. 

"I  see,"  he  said  calmly.  "Now, 
what  do  you  want  me  to  do  about  it?" 

It  was  the  feint  of  a  master-fighter 
and  it  did  its  work.  Gordon  had  ex- 
pected rage,  and  had  calculated  time 
and  place  accordingly;  he  had  pre- 
pared for  a  contemptuous  putting 
80 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

aside,  for  an  immediate  triangular 
scene,  for  the  allegation  of  insanity. 
But  the  exterior  of  acquiescence  uncov- 
ered the  one  joint  in  his  armor.  He 
hesitated,  stammered.  The  iron  man 
relentlessly  drove  home  his  blow. 

"You  see,  you  don't  know  what  you 
want.  You  have  only  a  boyish  notion 
of  stirring  up  some  sort  of  a  disturbance 
to  correspond  with  your  own  feelings. 
You  make  the  same  mistake  as  most 
artistic  people,  of  thinking  that  every 
man  who  hasn't  your  particular  kind  of 
nerves  and  your  emotional  view  of 
things  is  a  sort  of  brute.  I  understand 
all  about  this.  You  meet  an  attractive 
girl,  and  you  talk  to  her,  and  play  to 
8l 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

her,  and  in  three  days  you  convince 
yourself  that  you've  met  your  affinity 
— which  is  all  bosh.  Then  you  tell  the 
girl  and,  she  being  recently  engaged 
and  very  nervous,  you  make  her  think 
you  understand  her  as  no  one  else  does 
— I  know  all  about  that  old  trick — and 
then  you  both  go  into  heroics,  and  you 
come  to  me.  Well,  it's  unfortunate,  but 
it's  nothing  very  unusual.  I'm  sorry  for 
you  because  you're  sincere;  but  you'll 
find  that  nothing  very  much  will  hap- 
pen." 

"Excuse  me,"  Gordon  put  in,  "aren't 
you  ready  for  another  drink?" 

'Hudson  grinned.  He  was  a  very 
good  poker-player.  "Thanks,  it's  my 
82 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

turn,"  he  said,  ringing  the  bell.  They 
smoked  in  silence  until  the  drinks 
came ;  then  he  continued : 

"Now  you  just  sit  tight  and  let 
things  take  their  normal  course.  Cool 
off.  You've  made  some  trouble  and  the 
manly  thing  for  you  to  do  is  just  to  for- 
get it  and  be  around  with  us  in  a  ra- 
tional way,  just  as  if  nothing  had  hap- 
pened. If  you  think  there's  anything 
in  your  idea,  wait  and  see.  Only,"  the 
iron  rang  in  his  tone,  "no  heroics — no 
soulful  talks.  You  won't  be  allowed  to 
make  any  more  disturbance." 

"I'm  glad  you  look  at  it  that  way," 
Gordon  remarked.  "There'll  be  as  lit- 
tle trouble  as  I  can  manage.  What 

83 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

there  is  will  be  of  your  making,  because 
Miss  Dome  is  going  to  marry  me." 

Hudson  leaned  across  the  little  table, 
his  broad  jaw  set  like  a  vise. 

"Don't  make  a  nuisance  of  yourself 
— you  understand? — or  you'll  find 
yourself  where  you'll  be  harmless  for  a 
while." 

Gordon  shook  his  head.  "That  won't 
work,  you'll  find." 

"Won't  it?"  grimly. 

"No,  because  you  can't  work  it 
alone,"  retorted  Gordon  impatiently. 
"Man,  can't  you  understand?" 

Hudson  thought  a  moment,  looking 
into  his  eyes.  "If  I  catch  you  over- 
stepping the  proprieties,"  he  stated  de- 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

liberately,  "I'll  thrash  you  within  one 
inch  of  your  life." 

A  curious  chill  ran  over  Gordon. 
Then  a  flush.  Then  another  chill,  lin- 
gering in  the  roots  of  his  hair.  His  eyes 
narrowed. 

"Yes,"  he  answered  meditatively, 
"you  could  do  that,  of  course.  What 
then?" 

There  was  no  answer.  The  scale 
trembled  and  turned.  In  the  little 
globe  of  silence  that  seemed  to  shut 
them  in  from  the  tinkling,  noisy  room, 
Gordon  found  himself.  When  he  spoke 
again  he  had  no  doubts. 

"This  isn't  a  trial  of  strength — 
you're  stronger  than  I  am.  It  isn't  a 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

matter  between  you  and  me.  It's  a 
question  of  fact.  If  your  understanding 
of  this  thing  were  true,  I  couldn't  do 
anything.  As  it  is,  you  can't  do  any- 
thing. You  make  the  mistake  of  your 
kind  in  denying  the  existence  of  what- 
ever is  beyond  your  seeing.  You  might 
shoot  me,  but  you  won't;  you  might 
lock  me  up,  but  you  can't.  What  you 
do  doesn't  matter.  You  can't  beat  me, 
because  you  can't  beat  us;  you  can't 
beat  me,  because  you're  in  this  for 
yourself,  and  I'm  in  it  for  something 
beyond  myself;  you  can't  beat  me  be- 
cause I'm  weaker  than  you  and  I'm 
afraid  of  you,  and  neither  makes  any 
difference  to  me.  I  win,  because  I  have 
86 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

the  right,  and  I  know.  And  I'm  a  Gor- 
don, and  /  won't  stop" 

Hudson  leaned  back  in  his  chair, 
wondering  at  the  new  thing  before  him 
— the  luminous  face  of  a  man  trans- 
figured. The  world-old  glint  of  battle 
smiled  in  his  eyes. 

"You're  a  man,  Gordon,"  he 
growled,  "if  you  are  a  damned  fool." 

"Thanks.  For  the  rest,  as  you  said, 
we'll  see."  The  glamour  faded,  and 
Gordon's  artistic  sense  came  back  with 
the  remembering  of  his  untasted  glass. 

"Here's  my  best  regards."  The 
glasses  touched. 

"Your  good  health,  sir,"  said  Hud- 
son. 

87 


VII 

HE  resilient  endurance  of  the 
human  organism  is  perhaps 
the  greatest  wonder  in  a 
wonderful  world.  But  any  knowledge 
of  its  extent  is  both  costly  and  painful 
to  acquire.  And  through  the  numb  diu- 
turnity  of  the  next  two  days  Gordon 
learned  that,  although  a  man  may  drive 
himself  by  inherent  will  beyond  his 
normal  power  and  courage,  yet  he  pays 
the  price.  Need  borrows  at  usury.  And 
the  agony  of  sheer  physical  strain  was 
to  Gordon's  occasional  contemplation 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

an  uncanny  surprise.   He  was  not  con- 
scious of  any  commensurate  exertion. 

For  the  situation  was  externally 
calm,  and  altogether  inactive.  Hud- 
son was  economical  of  scenes.  He 
simply  saw  to  it  that  Audrey  and  Gor- 
don had  no  opportunity  to  solidify 
their  nebulous  relation.  They  were 
alone  now  and  then,  but  momently, 
and  at  what  he  would  have  called 
"rational"  times  and  places.  So  that 
the  two  were  forced  to  bear  their  mu- 
tuality like  a  guiltiness.  It  was  for- 
bidden the  honest  light  just  when  it 
most  needed  a  foothold  in  the  common- 
place. There  was  nothing  to  be  done, 
no  occasion  to  justify  the  overt  melo- 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

drama  of  an  arranged  meeting.  They 
were  together  most  of  the  time  without 
speech  of  what  was  clamorous  within 
them;  and  under  this  mockery  of  in- 
tercourse the  uneasy  tension  grew  and 
irritated,  oppressive  as  the  sultry  hush 
before  a  thunderstorm.  With  no  pal- 
pable change  the  whole  party  were  un- 
comfortable together — except  Hudson, 
who,  insensible  to  electricity,  was 
warily  pleased  to  see  his  Fabian  policy 
baffling  the  enemy.  Miss  Folcombe 
spoke  to  him  uncomprehendingly  of 
Gordon's  nervous  looks  and  inoppor- 
tune silences. 

"Nonsense,   Aunt  Elma,"   he   reas- 
sured   her,    "it's    your    imagination. 
90 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

Why,  you  don't  even  know  just  what 
you  imagine,  do  you?" 

Miss  Folcombe  floundered  amid  in- 
definities. 

"Well,  I  guess  there's  nothing  to 
worry  over.  And  we'll  be  at  Boulogne 
Friday.  Don't  put  ideas  in  Audrey's 
head  anyway." 

Of  course  Miss  Folcombe  felt  solely 
responsible  and  turned  against  Gordon 
all  the  intangible  terror  of  the  aroused 
chaperon.  Gordon  was  politely  made 
to  feel  unwelcome — so  politely  that  he 
distrusted  the  feeling  as  perhaps  only 
his  own  hypersensitiveness,  and  forced 
himself  to  disregard  it.  He  drove  him- 
self to  the  light  aimless  talk,  the  little 
911 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

ready  courtesies,  the  frank  steamer-in- 
timacy which  had  all  been  so  natural 
before;  and  he  did  it  with  a  prickly 
consciousness  of  acting  a  part,  with  a 
restless  urge  toward  activity  where  no 
act  presented  itself  as  advisable,  with  a 
weary  sense  of  drifting  before  petty 
circumstance.  His  conversation  with 
Hudson  constantly  took  the  form  of 
small  arguments,  trifling  contests  of 
wisdom  or  of  will,  in  which  he  seemed 
impalpably  on  trial  before  Audrey, 
and  in  which  he  nearly  always  got  the 
worst  of  the  encounter.  The  subjects 
somehow  fell  where  he  was  at  a  disad- 
vantage. If  he  refused  battle  Audrey 
would  drive  him  into  it  with  a  question 
92 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

or  appeal.  And  Hudson  was  so  cour- 
teous, so  forbearing  in  his  little  vic- 
tories, and  so  flawless  in  his  uncon- 
sciousness, that  Gordon  could  not  for 
the  life  of  him  determine  whether  the 
lists  were  opened  by  his  antagonist  or 
by  a  nagging  fate. 

It  was  all  so  petty,  in  any  aspect,  that 
he  was  ashamed  of  minding  it;  but  it 
was  as  deadly  a  sapping  of  his  self-con- 
fidence as  could  readily  have  been  de- 
vised. He  was  strung  to  a  great  event; 
and  the  heroic  humor  long  leashed 
with  no  more  worthy  quarry  than  a 
cloud  of  flies,  runs  mad  and  rends  its 
master.  Gordon  unreasonably  despised 
himself  for  doing  nothing,  when  in  fact 
93 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

nothing  was  to  do.  He  was  racing  his 
engine. 

He  could  not  at  all  understand  Au- 
drey. This  was  natural.  Solomon 
speaks  wonderingly  of  the  way  of  a 
man  with  a  maid;  it  is  tame  and  simple 
to  the  way  of  a  maid  with  a  man,  which 
she  herself  walks  blindly,  dazed  with 
light.  But  Gordon  was  used  to  under- 
stand people,  and  when  the  palimpsest 
of  suggestion  grew  illegible  he  must 
needs  go  on  reading,  miserably  bewil- 
dered among  alternative  interpreta- 
tions. 

Her  silence  worried  him.  She  made 
no  appeal,  asked  no  counsel,  never  in 
their  moments  of  privacy  made  any 

94 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

mention  of  what  had  passed  between 
them.  She  might  have  agreed  with 
Hudson  to  obliviate  romance.  She 
sprinkled  small-talk  over  the  threshold 
of  sincerity.  And  yet  she  never  seemed 
unconscious.  There  was  a  tension  un- 
der it  all.  She  seemed  to  be  always 
watching  how  he  comported  himself, 
weighing  him  in  the  balance;  as  if  she 
had  removed  herself  to  a  great  distance 
from  the  struggle,  whence  she  wisely 
smiled  at  him  out  of  a  tolerant,  kindly 
omniscience,  touched  with  a  tinge  of 
disappointment;  as  if  she  were  contem- 
plating some  prettily  youthful  ro- 
mance, being  herself  a  very  old  person. 
The  sense  that  she  was  sitting  in 

95 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

judgment  over  him  rasped  Gordon's 
nerves ;  and  her  detachment  seemed  bit- 
terly unfair.  If  she  would  only  stand 
by  his  side,  frankly  defying  opposition, 
the  whole  affair  would  become  so  in- 
flexibly simple.  What  could  stand  in 
their  way? 

In  his  weakest  hour  Gordon  asked 
a  direct  question.  They  were  watching 
a  school  of  porpoises  overside. 

"You  knew  that  we  had  a  talk  day 
before  yesterday?"  he  said. 
,     She  looked  at  him.    "About  what? 
Who?" 

Gordon  hated  to  phrase  the  obvious. 
"The  governors  of  North  and  South 
Carolina." 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

"I  don't  know  what  you  mean." 

Gordon  could  not  possibly  have  an- 
swered without  irritation. 

"I  knew  that  you  explained  yourself 
to  John  about  me,"  she  said  after 
a  while,  patiently. 

"Did  he  and  you  talk  it  over?" 

The  pulse  began  visibly  to  beat  in 
her  brown  throat. 

"No,"  she  answered,  "he  hasn't  al- 
luded to  it  at  all."  Then  she  added 
drily,  "Not  even  to  ask  me  if  I  knew 
of  it." 

Gordon  shrank  and  grew  white.  She 
watched  him  struggle  for  sane  words, 
looking  quietly  on  him  with  a  little 
droop  at  the  corners  of  her  mouth. 

97 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

What  she  felt  was  only  a  warm  mother- 
yearning  to  take  him  into  her  arms, 
calmly,  without  any  passion,  and  kiss 
his  hurt  eyes  and  rest  him  and  make 
him  drowsy-happy,  like  a  child  com- 
forted. But  it  was  eleven  in  the  morn- 
ing on  a  crowded  deck.  Gordon  read 
her  look  as  kindly  contempt,  and  she 
knew  that,  and  somehow  intended  it. 
She  turned  seaward.  "How  can  you  be 
so  serious  on  such  a  morning?  Consider 
the  fishes  of  the  sea,  how  they  swim." 

If  Gordon  had  read  her  eyes  aright, 
he  would  have  understood  that  in  that 
moment  it  became  possible  for  her  to 
love  him.  But  the  man  could  not  see, 
and  the  girl  did  not  know. 


VIII 


HAT  afternoon  a  gray  film 
swept  over  sky  and  sea,  and 
a  heavy  swell  swung  out  of 
the  deceiving  northeast.  Gordon  spent 
the  time  alone,  tramping  nervously 
about  the  ship,  alternately  pondering 
impractical  imaginations  and  trying 
aimlessly  to  get  away  from  himself  and 
rest.  He  was  irritably  unfit  for  com- 
pany, and  he  didn't  see  why  the  devil 
he  should  feel  so  tired  and  shaky.  It 
did  not  occur  to  him  as  important  that, 
although  he  had  not  actually  missed 

99 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

food  and  sleep,  yet  for  some  days  he 
had  eaten  tastelessly  and  slept  like  one 
in  a  fever;  that  he  had  forsaken  his 
pipe,  whereas  the  cigarette  is  a  treach- 
erous refuge  in  time  of  trouble;  and 
that  spiritual  power  frustrated  reacts 
with  cynical  materialism  upon  the  hu- 
man liver.  Moreover,  the  scale  of  his 
experiences  had  become  unmeaning  to 
him,  like  the  notation  of  great  numbers. 
He  had  no  measure  of  events,  and  was 
surprised  at  the  bodily  evidence  of 
stress. 

Toward  evening  a  chill  rage  of  wind 
brought  the  rain,  and  the  steamer  wal- 
lowed   sidelong    through    desolation. 
The  sunlit  blue  of  a  few  hours  before 
100 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

seemed  as  fictitious  as  the  remem- 
brance of  June  in  January.  Gordon 
visited  the  engine-room,  tried  his  col- 
legiate German  and  French  on  the 
steerage,  and  bored  the  mate  with  remi- 
niscences of  Clark  Russell.  He  tried 
to  write;  but  the  harmonies  refused  to 
color,  and  each  part  seemed  instinct 
with  a  perverse  cantankerous  individu- 
ality. So  he  returned  to  the  wet  deck 
with  a  certain  relief  in  facing  the  ac- 
tive malice  of  the  weather.  Dinner  was 
a  rattling  dreariness  of  empty  seats. 
Soon  afterward  Miss  Folcombe  and 
Audrey  disappeared;  and  Gordon, 
after  an  hour  of  expensively  bad  poker 
with  Hudson  and  a  couple  of  gentle- 
101 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

manly    nonentities,    crawled    into    his 
berth  with  a  dizzy  headache. 

To  his  unease  of  mind  and  body, 
sleep  was  absurd.  He  lay  with  closed 
eyes,  listening  to  the  irksome  sea-noises, 
mechanically  conscious  of  the  motion 
of  the  vessel,  of  the  steady  whir  and  jar 
of  the  machinery,  his  thought  pacing 
and  turning  and  exploring  its  limita- 
tions like  a  caged  beast.  Every  detail  of 
the  days  rose  before  him  in  irregular  re- 
view, now  sharply  sweet,  now  hotly 
shameful  with  distrust.  He  should 
have  refused  to  play.  It  had  been  child- 
ish to  break  his  bow — but  what  a  ges- 
ture! .  .  .  He  had  only  borrowed 
complexity  by  telling  Hudson.  .  .  . 
1 02 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

He  had  been  fearless  in  what  he  saw  to 
do.  He  had  made  no  slip  nor  failure. 
.  .  .  Where  had  he  failed?  Here,  a 
wiser  man  would  have  restrained  him- 
self; there  he  had  been  trivially  pru- 
dent before  opportunity.  .  .  .  He 
was  a  theatrical  young  fool.  .  .  . 
He  was  an  old  man  in  worldly  wisdom 
— "si  la  vieillesse  pouvait!"  Ah,  but  if 
they  both  cared,  nothing  then  could 
really  matter — let  God  look  after  the 
means. 

What  was  the  next  need?  He 
planned  feverishly,  only  to  decide  that 
he  was  wise  in  waiting  until  Audrey 
should  be  sure  of  herself.  .  .  .  And 
it  was  all  so  much  harder  for  her!  The 
103 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

unsureness  and  the  blindness  of  strug- 
gle, and  the  tangle  of  honor!  .  .  . 
The  beauty  and  the  joy  of  her  came 
upon  him  with  a  freshness  that  ached 
behind  his  eyes — the  thousand  little 
sweet  ways  of  her,  her  daintily  sure  re- 
sponses, her  utter  girlishness,  her  look 
or  tone  in  saying  this  or  that,  the  blessed 
faults  that  made  her  humanly  real  and 
dear.  Then  the  thought  of  Hudson 
brought  the  horror  of  physical  jealousy. 
She  was  all  that  a  man  might  seek  in 
her  .  .  .  and  if  it  should  all  prove  to 
be  for  him!  Relentless  imagination 
pictured  Hudson  holding  fast  her 
hands,  her  eyes  on  his  with  that  same 
look  in  them,  her  lips — that  way  lay 
104 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

madness ;  he  shut  out  the  vision  of  that 
lie. 

And  now  the  arch-doubt  rearose, 
creeping  about  the  crannies  of  his  soul, 
and  would  not  be  disregarded.  In  cold 
soberness  of  reason,  was  he  certain  of 
himself?  Could  it  be  that  this  wonder- 
growth  of  days  was  actual,  able  to  en- 
dure time  and  commonplace,  a  thing  to 
live  by  always,  that  could  not  falter  nor 
change?  Was  he  not  deceiving  himself 
into  an  artistic  ecstasy?  Where  was  a 
sign  by  which  he  might  know  reality 
.  .  .  what  was  love,  after  all?  Gor- 
don heard  the  specter  out  to  the  last 
word,  and  defied  it  face  to  face.  "All 
right,"  he  said  aloud.  "Suppose  I  am 
105 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

mistaken  and  don't  care  in  the  right 
way.  Suppose  there's  no  such  thing. 
Let  it  be  all  a  lie — by  God,  I'll  go  on 
acting  clear  through  as  if  it  were  utter 
truth  I"  Then  he  had  rest  from  himself 
and  fell  into  a  sleep. 

He  awoke  suddenly,  looking  into 
Audrey's  eyes.  Her  face  hung  before 
him  vignetted  in  the  darkness,  looking 
at  him  with  that  drawn  longing  he  had 
seen  once  before.  It  was  like  that 
after-presence  of  a  dream  which  some- 
times reaches  past  awakening.  He  sat 
i 

up  and  shook  himself  thoroughly 
awake. 

She    was    still    there,    motionless, 
somehow  with  no  impression  of  local- 
106 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

ity,  visible  midway  before  him.  He 
shut  his  eyes.  That  made  no  difference, 
and  his  hair  crisped  a  little.  He  tried 
to  go  to  sleep,  but  the  urge  of  that  mys- 
terious look  was  not  to  be  borne.  Was 
he  remembering  it  or  did  he  actually 
seem  to  see  her  face? 

"Oh,  hell,"  he  muttered,  "this  won't 
do.  If  I'm  going  to  have  'em  this  way 
I'd  better  get  some  fresh  air."  He 
looked  at  his  watch,  surprised  to  find 
that  it  was  not  yet  eleven,  dressed,  put- 
ting on  a  heavy  sweater  and  a  raincoat, 
and  went  on  deck,  misnaming  himself 
for  a  whole  asylum  of  fools. 

The  ship  was  lurching  through  a 
black  wrath  of  wind  and  water,  her 
107 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

lights  nebulous  in  the  mingled  rain  and 
spray,  a  wet  roar  driving  along  her 
slippery  decks.  Gordon  worked  his 
way  forward  close  to  the  rail,  keeping 
his  feet  with  difficulty,  and  half-choked 
by  the  salt  gusts.  Under  the  lee  of  a 
boat  he  made  vain  attempts  to  light  his 
pipe.  The  matches  flared  and  went  out 
and  he  grew  profane. 

A  darker  shadow  moved  in  the  dark- 
ness at  the  other  end  of  the  boat,  and  a 
guarded  laugh  broke  out. 

"Richard,  you're  in  the  presence  of  a 
lady." 

"Audrey!  For  Heaven's  sake,  child, 
what  are  you  out  here  alone  for?" 
108 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

"Don't  make  such  a  noise,  boy.  Come 
here,  and  I'll  give  you  some  wet  skirt 
to  sit  on." 

He  groped  across  to  her.  "You 
mustn't  stay  out  here,  dear.  It's  too  in- 
sane— and  besides,  you'll  get  your 
death.  Come." 

"Richard,  please  don't  make  me  go 
in.  It'll  be  worse  for  me  than  staying." 
She  caught  at  his  hands.  "Please — 
won't  you  believe  me?"  The  dry  ten- 
sion of  her  voice  meant  something  more 
than  freakishness. 

"What  is  it?" 

"Come  here."  She  drew  him  down 
beside  her,  keeping  his  left  hand  in 
both  her  own,  and  pressing  her  cheek 
109 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

against  his  arm.  It  was  as  if  she  could 
not  get  close  enough  to  him.  She  was 
shivering,  and  he  threw  his  cape 
around  her. 

"I'm  not  cold."  She  had  a  heavy  rug 
shawl-wise  about  her  head  and  shoul- 
ders, and  her  hands  were  dry  and 
warm.  "Richard,  I — I  couldn't  sleep 
— and  I  needed  you.  I  just  had  to  be 
out  in  the  air,  somehow.  It  wasn't 
silly." 

"How  long—?" 

"Only  a  moment.  I  ...  tried  to 
make  you  know." 

He  had  no  need  to  answer  in  words. 
Audrey  raised  her  head  and  stared  at 

1 10 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

him,  her  lips  apart,  the  darkness  of  her 
wide  eyes  a  shimmering  violet. 

"Did  you  know?  Was  that  why  you 
came?"  in  a  whisper.  Her  face  hung 
before  him  in  the  mid-gloom,  vaguely 
visible,  terribly  like  his  hallucination. 

"Yes   .    .   .    that   must   be   why   I 


came." 


She  nestled  back,  saying,  "Please 
don't  speak  to  me,  Richard,  for  a  little 
while." 

The  spell  of  her  seemed  to  shut  them 
in.  Fictitiously,  from  a  strange  dis- 
tance, came  the  unsteady  rush  of  the 
wind  and  the  plashy  sea-noises.  She 
was  alive  and  warmly  real  and  infi- 
nitely woman.  Gordon's  questioning 
in 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

weakness  was  vanquished  before  the 
face  of  her  need,  and  his  self-torment 
drowned  fathoms  deep  in  the  sense  of 
possession.  He  was  quaintly  alive  to 
the  commonplace:  the  rain  chilled  his 
cheek,  the  arm  Audrey  leaned  against 
was  numb,  and  his  right  foot  cramped 
under  him  was  going  to  sleep.  More- 
over, he  was  damply  muffled  in  much 
clothes.  Yet  all  these  matters  did  not 
offend,  nor  intrusively  jar,  but  were 
simply  a  part  of  joy,  mysteriously  har- 
monized in  the  deep  reality  of  tender- 
ness. The  Kingdom  of  Heaven  does 
not  reject;  it  assumes. 

The    girl   stirred.     "Tell   me    how 
much  you  care." 

112 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

"I  care." 

She  shook  her  shoulders  unsatisfied. 
"Not  that  way.  That  isn't  what  I 
want." 

"I  know.  You're  not  ready  yet  for 
what  you  want,  dear." 

"Oh,  stop  thinking!  There  never 
was  such  a  man  as  you,  Richard.  Will 
you  never  give  me  anything  I  don't 
drag  out  of  you?" 

In  the  pause  he  touched  her  hair 
with  his  lips — so  lightly  that  perhaps 
she  did  not  feel  it.  Presently  she 
looked  up  at  him. 

"What  do  you  mean?" 

'He  answered  slowly:  "You  aren't 
sure  yet  ...  of  yourself — or  our- 

"3 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

selves.  You  want  to  care.  No,  I  can't 
make  you  see.  Perhaps  I  myself  don't 
understand,  but  ...  I  mustn't  let 
you  confuse  love  and  loving." 

"You  don't  want  me." 

He  laughed. 

"No — you    don't    want    me.     You 
don't." 

"If  I  accepted  almost  you,  would 
you  ever  have  more  to  give  me?" 

She  sat  up,  holding  the  back  of  her 
left  hand  before  his  eyes. 

"I    noticed    that   ten   minutes    ago, 
child.  What  have  you  done  with  it?" 

"It's  overboard — to-night." 

"Did  you  need  to  do  a  thing  like  that 
— to  make  yourself  sure?" 
114 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

"Richard — ?"  Her  eyes  were  on  his, 
with  a  look  that  was  a  faintness  and  a 
flame.  As  he  bent  over,  she  hesitated 
a  moment,  turning  away  her  face.  And 
then — the  sweet  shock  'dazed  and 
blinded  them  like  a  violent  blow.  The 
girl  shuddered  back,  whispering  little 
broken  phrases.  The  man  set  his  teeth 
against  dizziness.  The  dear  wild  thing 
in  his  arms  was  become  his  share  of  the 
world,  her  faltering  breath  the  ebb  and 
glow  of  infinity,  the  fragrance  of  her 
hair  his  meaning  of  life.  And  still  he 
took  note  of  the  passing  of  time,  ready 
to  make  an  ending  of  their  hour.  At 
last  Audrey  broke  the  silence  with  the 
old,  dry  strain  in  her  voice. 

"5 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

"Oh,  my  dear,  my  dear,  I  don't  be- 
lieve in  all  this  I" 

Gordon  bit  his  lips.  He  understood, 
and  yet  the  mere  words  hurt  him. 

"Don't  worry  yourself,  Audrey; 
don't  try  to  think;  just  let  things  hap- 
pen ;  it's  all  right." 

"No,  it  isn't.  It's  a  dream,  Richard. 
We  must  drop  it,  and  forget,  just  as  I 
said.  To-night's  the  end." 

"It's  only  the  beginning.  Listen, 
dear.  It's  the  suddenness  and  the  diffi- 
culties and  the  melodrama  of  the  situa- 
tion that  look  unreal.  We  need  time 
and  commonplaces  and  a  chance  to 
make  friends,  you  and  I.  We're  safe. 
Only  don't  make  climaxes.  We  can  do 
116 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

or  not  do  as  we  choose,  if  only  we  trust 
ourselves,  and  wait." 

"I  can't  wait.  I  can't  bear  it.  Rich- 
ard, if  you  want  me  you  must  come  to 
Germany  and  marry  me  before  I  lose 
hold.  Oh,  hold  me,  and  don't  let  me 
go!" 

"I'll  do  that,  or  anything,  if  neces- 
sary— but  we  mustn't  lose  our  heads. 
Now  you  must  go  in  before  some  one 
misses  you.  It's  a  scandalous  time  of 
night." 

She  sat  up  and  pushed  back  her 
heavy  hair.  "Yes,  I  must  go  in;  and 
you  must  say  good-by,  Richard — per- 
haps for  always.  I  mean  it — you  don't 
know." 

117 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

"May  I  hurt  you?"  Gordon  asked. 

"I  wish  you  would."  Her  smile  was 
wonderful,  if  he  could  have  seen  it. 

"Is  any  one  else"  ...  he  paused 
for  choice  of  words — "is  any  one  else 
possible  for  you  now  .  .  .  physically?" 

She  shrank  as  if  he  had  struck  her, 
and  stared  at  him  with  a  wondering 
horror  in  her  eyes.  After  a  moment  he 
bent  down  and  kissed  her  quietly. 

"God  help  me — no!"  she  said,  and 
put  her  two  arms  around  his  neck. 
i     A  firm,  even  step  approached.  Gor- 
don stiffened  every  muscle.    Audrey 
did  not  move. 

"Your  aunt's  looking  for  you,  Au- 
drey," said  Hudson. 
lit 


IX 

ITH  'difficulty  Gordon  rose 
and  helped  Audrey  to  her 
feet.  The  momentary  walk 
through  the  wind-swept  and  heaving 
darkness  was  singularly  long  and  un- 
real— the  chill,  the  numbness  in  his 
right  foot,  the  two  silent  shadows  by 
his  side.  He  found  time  to  notice  that 
his  knees  were  shaking,  that  his  head- 
ache had  returned  with  dizzy  intensity, 
as  if  to  some  other  person,  and  that 
somebody  was,  absurdly  enough,  grow- 
119 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

ing  beyond  question  seasick.  The 
chiseled  wrath  of  Miss  Folcombe 
framed  in  a  yellow  doorway  was  as 
meaningless  as  the  empty  words  of 
good  night.  A  door  clicked  shut,  and 
the  two  men  without  a  word  turned 
back  together  whence  they  came.  Gor- 
don's attention  was  given  to  holding 
his  teeth  clenched  and  taking  each  step 
carefully.  His  hair  was  bristling,  and 
he  was  hot  and  cold  in  waves,  and  his 
mouth  was  curiously  dry.  It  was 
vaguely  astonishing  that  his  body  con- 
tinued to  obey  his  will.  Experimen- 
tally he  worked  his  fingers.  He  had 
taken  off  his  raincoat  and  was  carrying 
it  over  his  arm.  Suddenly  Hudson 
1 20 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

turned  upon  him  and  struck  him  heav- 
ily in  the  face. 

Gordon  reeled  back,  catching  at 
something  to  steady  himself.  A  black 
horror  of  physical  fear  closed  over  him 
— not  fear  of  a  man,  not  fear  of  any 
injury  or  pain,  only  an  agony  to  get 
away,  to  escape  struggle,  to  hide  and 
die.  For  an  instant,  he  could  have 
fallen  on  his  face  and  cried  for  mercy; 
but  there  was  a  reason  why  he  must  not 
— he  must  not.  It  was  a  boat  he  was 
clinging  to.  He  caught  himself  with  a 
wrench  that  plucked  loose  the  very 
roots  of  his  soul,  and  rushed  in  at  his 
enemy.  'He  felt  flesh  against  his  hand. 

There  was  a  sick  shock,  and  he  was 
121 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

down  on  the  wet  boards.  He  struggled 
up  and  lurched  in  again,  coughing. 
There  was  no  skill  in  such  a  fight — 
only  darkness,  and  the  shuffling  of  feet, 
and  the  blunt  sound  of  blows,  and  the 
smell  of  sweat  as  the  two  bodies  came 
together,  and  over  all  the  ecstasy  to  do 
bodily  hurt  that  is  like  the  very  pas- 
sion of  love,  casting  out  pain  and  fear. 
Neither  man  could  at  all  guard  him- 
self; but  in  darkness  on  an  unsteady 
footing  a  man  may  strike  at  a  face  and 
miss.  From  the  first,  Hudson  drove 
with  careful  fury  at  the  lighter  man's 
body. 

It  could  not  last.   Time  after  time 
Gordon  was   dashed  backward  in   a 
122 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

choking  heap.  Again  and  again  he 
scrambled  to  his  feet  and  flung  himself 
at  the  dim  face  that,  as  in  a  nightmare, 
he  could  not  strike  hard  enough. 
Sometimes  three  or  four  blows  went 
home,  sometimes  only  one — and  then 
the  shock  and  the  breathless  pause  and 
the  renewal.  No  matter,  he  was  still 
fighting.  He  had  only  to  keep  on  ... 
keep  on.  Both  men  were  too  angry  to 
wrestle.  If  they  closed,  they  broke  sav- 
agely apart  and  fell  to  it  afresh.  If 
they  slipped  and  went  down,  they 
struck  out  eagerly  as  they  rose.  There 
was  very  little  noise.  In  the  storm,  one 
might  have  passed  a  few  feet  away  un- 
aware. 

123 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

Presently  Gordon  fell  sidewise 
against  the  rail,  and  hung  over  it,  help- 
less, deathly  sick.  Hudson  stood  over 
him. 

"Had  about  enough?"  he  asked  after 
a  moment. 

The  beaten  man  turned  on  him  and 
laughed  in  his  face. 

"What's  that  got  to  do  with  it?"  he 
snarled,  and  sprang  at  him  again. 

Hudson  stepped  back  and  threw  his 
weight  into  the  blow.  It  missed.  Then 
his  brain  splashed  full  of  light  and  his 
ears  hummed.  The  two  clenched, 
swayed,  swung  and  fell  violently,  Gor- 
don's head  under  the  heavier  man's 
chest. 

124 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

Hudson  lay  a  moment,  panting. 
Then  he  slowly  rose,  brushing  his  hand 
across  his  eyes.  It  came  away  warmly 
wet.  He  fumbled  for  his  handkerchief 
and  checked  the  blood.  The  limp  thing 
on  the  deck  did  not  move.  He  bent 
'down  and  found  the  pulse — only 
stunned,  of  course.  He  stood  for  a  long 
moment,  looking  and  listening.  Then 
he  deliberately  put  on  Gordon's  rain- 
coat, turning  the  collar  up  about  his 
face.  Then  raising  the  inert  weight  in 
his  arms,  he  made  his  way  aft.  At  the 
door  of  Gordon's  state-room  a  flurried 
steward  asked  what  was  the  matter. 

"Fell  against  a  boat  and  hit  his 
125 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

head,"  said  Hudson  calmly.  "No,  he's 
all  right — knocked  him  out,  that's  all." 

'He  laid  Gordon  in  his  berth,  and 
looked  in  the  glass.  No,  he  could  not 
afford  to  be  questioned.  As  he  turned 
away  Gordon  opened  his  eyes.  He 
looked  bewilderedly  about  the  room, 
saw  Hudson,  and  tried  to  raise  him- 
self; fell  back  and  closed  his  eyes  again. 

"Doctor'll  be  here  in  a  minute,"  said 
Hudson.  "How  are  you — all  right?" 

The  eyes  opened  again  and  stared  in- 
solently into  Hudson's. 

"You  lose,"  Gordon  said  wearily. 
"Your  game's  played.  Now  go — I'm 
tired." 

Hudson  pressed  the  button  and  went 
126 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

out.  As  he  shut  himself  unobserved 
into  the  safety  of  his  own  state-room,  he 
discovered  fear. 

The  sense  of  unreality — of  moving 
in  a  painted  world  where  all  things 
were  and  were  not,  and  she  herself  a 
figure  grimacing  through  a  pantomime 
to  be  looked  at  with  dry  curiosity  from 
a  distance — hung  about  Audrey  like  a 
veil.  Mercifully,  it  enabled  her  to  face 
Miss  Folcombe's  midnight  homily  in 
an  impervious  silence.  With  nothing  to 
say,  she  literally  said  nothing,  and  was 
not  to  be  driven  from  that  refuge ;  even 
when  the  kindly  old  lady,  stung  with 
the  sense  of  exclusion — as  if  she  were 
127 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

somehow  trying  to  reach  a  wife — 
lashed  bitterly  at  those  sensitive  places 
whereof  her  own  womanhood  re- 
minded her.  Audrey  listened  intact,  in- 
tellectually conscious  of  hearing  that 
which  no  woman  may  endure  from  an- 
other woman,  and  wondering  why  this 
image  that  was  herself  felt  neither  an- 
ger nor  any  shame. 

"It's  a  pity  you  feel  it  so  much,"  she 
said  at  the  end. 

Miss  Folcombe  gasped.  "Feel  it — 
,  it's  nothing  to  me!"  and  went  to  bed 
in  a  sniffing  gust  of  tears.  Audrey  won- 
dered why  she  did  not  feel  sorry  for 
her. 

All  through  the  next  day  the  veil 
128 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

thickened  and  increasingly  she  won- 
dered at  herself.  In  the  afternoon 
Hudson  appeared,  and  they  had  a  long 
calm  talk  together,  reviewing  all  the 
facts  of  those  immeasurably  distant 
yesterdays  when  she  had  been  cast 
aside  from  the  rational  levels  of  life 
by  a  wind  of  unreasoning  emotion. 
Somebody  was  in  calm  agreement  over 
these  unfortunate  but  nowise  mirac- 
ulous matters.  Somebody  agreed  that 
most  highly  strung  people  had  at  some 
time  an  outburst  of  impossible  romance 
and  that  they  themselves  were  for- 
tunate in  getting  the  distemper  over 
with  before  their  marriage.  There  was 
no  danger  now  of  any  further  disturb- 
129 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

ance  to  their  solid  and  durable  liking 
for  each  other.  Somebody  saw  how  dif- 
ferent was  this  comfortable  daylight 
from  the  fever-fit  of  an  evanescent  pas- 
sion— which,  rightly  understood,  was 
even  a  part  of  emanation  from  their 
consistent  normality — a  satellite,  shot 
off  burning  into  space  as  their  world 
cooled  and  shrank  to  habitable  propor- 
tions. Somebody  was  meeting  the  big, 
dumb  man  half-way  in  finding  expres- 
sion for  these  things,  and  felt  an  almost 
strange  kindliness  toward  him.  Some- 
body would  have  married  John  Hud- 
son just  then,  as  Somebody  had  agreed 
to  do  some  months  before — if  he  had 
understood  his  need  to  bind  her  in  that 
130 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

moment,  and  had  taken  care  not  to 
awaken  Audrey,  who,  from  the  utter- 
most corner  of  herself,  was  looking 
dreamily  out  across  duality  and  won- 
dering whether  a  black  eye  would  have 
had  so  coarse  a  look  upon  the  face  of 
Richard  Gordon. 

"I'd  better  speak  to  him  before  he 
leaves  us  in  the  morning,"  said  Some- 
body at  last. 

"You'd  better  not  see  him  at  all,"  re- 
plied Hudson. 

"Oh,  there'll  be  no  excitement — 
you'd  better  be  in  the  room.  Only  I 
owe  it  to  us  all  to  tell  him  myself,  I 
think.  Goodness  knows,  I've  made 
enough  trouble." 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

"What  will  you  say?"  slowly.  "He 
won't  believe  you." 

"No,  but  he'd  take  longer  to  believe 
in  circumstances.  Oh,  just  as  you  like, 
of  course.  It  makes  no  real  difference." 

Hudson  looked  long  into  her  eyes,  his 
battered  brows  bent  into  a  knot,  read- 
ing and  weighing  all  that  he  saw  and 
knew. 

"No,"  he  said  at  length,  "I  don't  see 
how  it  can  alter  the  facts,  if  you  con- 
trol yourself.  Go  ahead." 


132 


X 


OWARD  evening  Gordon 
came  out  of  a  fever  to  find 
a  note  under  his  pillow. 
After  a  while  he  remembered  putting 
it  there  in  one  of  his  past  lives.  He  lay 
still,  in  that  pallid  surprise  of  the  senses 
that  follows  fever,  watching  the  danc- 
ing shadow-globes  on  wall  and  deck, 
and  thinking  as  hard  as  his  head  would 
let  him. 

"I  haven't  skipped  a  day,  have  I?" 
he  asked  the  doctor  an  hour  later. 
"When  do  we  make  Boulogne?" 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

"No,  we're  in  the  Channel  now. 
We'll  be  there  early  to-morrow  morn- 
ing. How  do  you  feel?" 

Richard  detailed  his  symptoms. 
"I've  got  to  get  off  at  Boulogne,  you 
see." 

The  doctor  scowled.  "You're  one 
bruise,  and  three  of  your  ribs  are  loos- 
ened in  front — if  you  were  twenty  years 
older,  they'd  be  smashed  in  like  an  old 
basket.  But  it  isn't  that — you  don't  re- 
act properly — your  nerves  are  all 
drawn.  You've  been  dragging  the  vi- 
tality out  of  yourself,  somehow — got 
anything  on  your  mind?" 

"Well,  I  haven't  got  much  on  my 
stomach." 

134 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

The  doctor  grinned.  "You're  the 
only  man  I  ever  saw  who  could  keep  a 
secret  when  he  was  delirious.  I  think 
you'd  better  go  on  to  Hamburg.  You'll 
save  by  it  in  the  long  run." 

After  supper,  Gordon  succeeded  in 
getting  into  his  clothes.  His  head  was 
hollow,  and  his  hands  and  feet  ran 
through  assorted  sizes.  But  he  could 
walk  after  a  fashion,  and  that  was  the 
main  thing.  He  found  Audrey  in  a  cor- 
ner of  the  saloon,  pretending,  as  he 
came  across  to  her,  to  be  reading  a 
magazine.  At  the  other  end  of  the 
room  Hudson  and  Miss  Folcombe  were 
playing  cribbage. 

"Hello!"  he  said,  dropping  dizzily 

135 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

into  a  seat.  "What  is  it  you've  got  to 
say  to  me?" 

Audrey  put  down  the  periodical. 

"I'm  glad  you're  about  again.  How 
do  you  feel?" 

"I  don't  feel.  Come  to  Hecuba." 

She  glanced  across  at  Hudson,  then 
back  at  him.  "Why  .  .  .  you  don't 
show  at  all." 

Gordon  laughed.  "Oh,  I  got  mine 
without  any  time  wasted  in  spoiling 
my  manly  beauty."  He  stopped,  looked 
at  her  a  moment,  and  said  abruptly  and 
sharply.  "Come  out  of  it — now — and 
say  what  you've  planned  to  say." 

The  veil  fell.  The  numbness  melted, 
and  all  that  lived  in  Audrey  awoke  in 
136 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

a  breath  to  suffer  and  to  struggle  and  to 
know.  The  speech  that  she  drove  her- 
self to  make  was  an  agony,  a  grappling 
with  that  other  self  who  had  suddenly 
become  a  tyrant  and  a  torturer,  darkly 
glorious  with  that  dearest,  deadliest  sin 
of  a  good  woman — the  frozen  courage 
of  renunciation. 

"Richard,  I — I  want  to  tell  you  that 
it's  all  over.  It's  impossible.  I  think 
I  love  you  in  some  beautiful,  unreal 
way — but  I  shall  never  marry  you,  and 
I  shall  marry  John.  You  don't  believe 
that,  but  it's  right  and  it's  true,  and  it 
must  be  so.  I  can't  trust  or  live  with 
the  part  of  myself  that  answers  to  you. 
It  isn't  me — it's  above  and  apart  from 

137 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

me,  not  for  every  day.  I  can't  breathe 
the  air  you  live  in  year  after  year — I 
should  starve  in  it.  I  need  a  big,  strong, 
earthly  man,  reeking  with  humanity.  I 
must  be  the  soul  for  the  two,  not  he. 
You  must  try  to  understand  and  forgive 
me.  I  hate  to  hurt  you,  dear,  but  you 
will  come  to  see  that  I  did  it  only  to  be 
kind.  I'm  quite  myself  now,  and  I've 
found  out  exactly  how  I  feel.  I'm 
right  and  I'm  sure,  and  you  must  face 
the  fact  and  believe  what  I  say.  You 
must  never  speak  to  me  again." 

"Is  that  all?  I'm  sorry  you've 
worked  yourself  into  such  a  state." 

"It  is  all.  Believe  it  as  soon  as  you 
can — and  .  .  .  good-by." 

138 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

He  leaned  back  in  the  corner  of  the 
wall,  gazing  at  her  as  upon  an  old  and 
familiar  thing. 

"Do  you  think  I  don't  understand? 
You're  in  a  martyrdom — the  devil's  pet 
lie." 

"You  don't  understand,  Richard." 

"Sit  down.  Why  did  you  feel  that 
you  must  send  for  me  to  say  these 
things?" 

In  the  silence  Audrey  looked  at  last 
into  the  face  of  her  other  self. 

"All  that  sort  of  talk  is  absurd,  you 
see.  And  now  I'll  tell  you  why — be- 
cause you  are  not  going  to  bid  a  beauti- 
ful dream  farewell.  Instead  of  that, 
you  are  going  to  Paris  to-morrow,  with 
139 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

an  impecunious  fiddler  by  the  name  of 
Richard  Gordon." 

There  was  no  magnetism  of  ener- 
getic will  in  his  weary  voice,  no  empire 
in  his  eyes.  He  was  simply  stating  a 
fact  grown  trite  with  long  possession. 
He  had  no  sense  of  dominance,  of  meet- 
ing a  great  moment — only  a  certainty 
impassive  as  the  consciousness  of  his 
own  existence,  that  the  truth  was  as  he 
said.  He  had  no  triumph,  even,  no 
glory  in  winning  the  prize  of  the  great 
struggle  of  his  life  that  had  made  and 
proved  him  a  man.  He  hardly  felt  just 
then  any  emotion  of  his  love  for  the 
woman.  Only,  it  was  a  trouble  to  find 
words  for  the  emphasis  of  truism;  and 
140 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

he  was  very  tired.  After  a  little  pause 
he  gathered  words  again,  and  in  a  few 
sharp,  impersonal  sentences  outlined 
his  plan,  simply,  clearly,  so  that  even 
through  the  bright  haze  of  her  atten- 
tion she  could  make  no  material  mis- 
take. She  was  looking  at  him  with 
something  of  the  overtaken,  half-horri- 
fied surprise  that  his  first  careless  heart- 
reading  had  brought  into  her  eyes  a 
week  before;  but  there  was  a  differ- 
ence— an  ineffable  difference,  like  the 
change  in  the  melody  he  had  made  and 
played  for  her  one  night. 

"And   I  might  have  married  that 
man  if  he  hadn't  let  me  speak  to  you," 
she  said  at  last,  softly. 
1141 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

Gordon  shook  his  head.  "Wouldn't 
have  made  a  bit  of  difference,  dear.  If 
you  still  think  it  would,  we'll  wait." 

She  turned  her  head  away.  "When 
.  .  .  did  I  begin  to  care?"  she  asked. 

He  smiled  his  quaint  smile.  She 
read  it 

"I  know — but  say  when." 

"When  you  jumped  on  me  for  losing 
my  sand  and  asking  questions — that  day 
on  deck." 

Her  eyes  filled  suddenly  and  she 
rose,  holding  out  her  left  hand. 

"Yes — you  do  know  now.  Good 
night." 

She  hurried  across  the  room,  head 
bent.  Hudson  stopped  her  at  the  door. 
142 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

"Well?" 

"You  brute!"  she  whispered.  "You 
brute!"  and  brushed  past.  There  was 
that  in  her  face  which  Hudson  had 
never  seen. 

He  stood  a  moment  frowning.  Then 
he  shook  his  head  like  a  wounded  beast 
and  followed  her.  Gordon  looked  at 
his  watch  and  deliberately  lighted  a 
cigarette. 

Next  morning  after  breakfast  Miss 
Folcombe  and  Hudson  were  standing 
by  the  rail,  looking  out  over  the  smoky, 
sun-twisted  roofs  and  spires  of  Bou- 
logne-sur-Mer.  Miss  Folcombe  was 
pointing  out  objects  of  interest  with  a 
comment  of  mingled  memory  and 

H3 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

Baedeker.  Gordon  came  up  behind 
them,  violin-case  in  hand. 

"Good  morning,  and  good-by,"  he 
said. 

Miss  Folcombe's  bow  was  a  model  in 
its  kind.  Hudson  said,  a  little  awk- 
wardly, "I  thought  you'd  gone  ashore 
earlier." 

"I've  been  ashore  since  five  o'clock. 
Where's  Miss  Dome?" 

"Perhaps,"  said  Hudson  slowly, 
"you'd  better  go  before  she  comes  up. 
You  two  said  all  you  had  to  say  last 
night,  didn't  you?" 

Miss  Folcombe  had  turned  away  to 
look  critically  at  a  laughing  group  of 
tourists  who  in  turn  were  much  inter- 
144 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

ested  in  the  steerage  passengers.  She 
had  subtly  included  Hudson  in  the  act, 
so  that  Gordon  was  somehow  impal- 
pably  removed  to  a  distance. 

Gordon  looked  at  his  watch.  "I'm 
going  in  just  ten  minutes.  In  the  mean- 
while—" 

Miss  Folcombe  interrupted  with  a 
gasp.  Audrey  was  coming  toward 
them.  It  was  the  change  in  her  dress 
that  had  astonished  Miss  Folcombe. 
Hudson,  slower  to  translate  observa- 
tion, gathered  his  brows  into  an  un- 
symmetrical  frown  as  Audrey  joined 
the  group. 

"What's  the  meaning  of  this?"  he  de- 
manded. 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

"We're  going  ashore,"  Gordon  an- 
swered deliberately.  "At  half-past  ten 
we're  going  to  be  married  at  the  Amer- 
ican vice-consulate.  After  that,  we're 
going  on  to  Paris  on  the  eleven-eight- 


een." 


For  the  second  time  Hudson  was  in 
the  presence  of  the  inconceivable.  For 
the  second  time  he  showed  no  sign  of 
wavering. 

"Oh,  no,  you're  not,"  he  growled. 

"Why?"  said  Audrey  quietly. 

"Because  you  are  not  going  to  do 
anything  in  a  hurry.  You're  not  a  cap- 
tive heroine,  you  know.  There's  no  oc- 
casion for  melodrama.  And  whether 
you  see  it  or  not,  I  want  you  to  have 
146 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

time  to  decide  your  own  future  ration- 
ally, in  your  own  way.  Let  me  take 
your  things." 

Gordon  had  been  watching,  as  if  for 
an  expected  cue. 

"Just  as  you  like,"  he  put  in;  "we'll 
wait,  if  you  say  so." 

The  iron  bent.  Hudson  looked  from 
one  to  the  other  without  understanding. 

"Don't  you  see,"  Audrey  spoke  very 
gently,  almost  regretfully,  as  one  re- 
fuses a  pleasure  to  a  child,  "that  it 
doesn't  really  make  any  difference — 
here  and  now,  or  at  home  after  going 
over  everything  with  father?" 

Miss  Folcombe  spluttered  into  the 
pause  with  a  half-hysterical  invective. 

147 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

"Wait  a  moment,"  Audrey  broke  in ; 
"let's  hear  what  John  says." 

The  iron  man  turned  slowly  to  the 
man  of  steel. 

"You  knew  I  could  stop  this  plan  if 
you  told  me  of  it?" 

"Of  course.  What  would  be  the 
use?" 

The  iron  cracked  and  broke.  Hud- 
son bent  his  heavy  head  a  little,  as  if  he 
were  shouldering  up  some  great 
weight.  Then  he  looked  up  steadily 
into  the  other  man's  eyes. 

"In  the  Middle  Ages,  I'd  have 
beaten  you,"  he  said.  "As  it  is,  I  think 
I'll  go  to  your  wedding.  Come,  Aunt 
Elma." 

148 


'''  '•       *. 


I 


\\\ 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

Miss  Folcombe  caught  at  the  rail, 
drawing  breath  for  an  outburst.  Could 
a  well-bred  God  behold  these  impossi- 
bilities and  withhold  miraculous  fire? 
But  the  electric  sense  of  a  scene  had 
spread  over  the  twittering  deck.  There 
was  a  stillness,  as  in  a  meadow  under 
the  passing  of  a  cloud.  People  began 
to  whisper  and  to  glance  curiously  their 
way.  In  the  chaos  of  the  proprieties, 
amid  the  shards  of  her  universe  tum- 
bling about  her  chiseled  ears,  Miss 
Folcombe  remembered  her  ancestors 
and  became,  after  her  own  fashion,  he- 
roic. She  threw  herself  conventionally 
upon  Audrey's  neck. 

"Good-by,  dear,"  she  cried  in  the 
149 


THE  RIGHT  MAN 

voice  of  publicity.  "I'll  see  you  again 
at  the  station.  And  I  hope  you  have  a 
perfectly  lovely  time!" 

And  Richard  and  Audrey,  clear- 
eyed  against  all  the  trouble  before 
them,  wise  in  the  knowledge  of  them- 
selves and  of  the  battle  wherein  all  vic- 
tory is  but  a  challenge  and  a  beginning, 
went  down  together  into  the  old-world 
city  with  Summer  in  their  hearts. 


THE  END 


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